The Future of Longwave 252kHz (RTE Radio 1)

topper75

end of the road wrote: »

they contributed via making the huge sacrifice of leaving the motherland to go to britain and all that went with it.

Given the contrasting economic situations between the two lands in those days, I would be quite confident that it was indeed my people, the ones who stayed, who were the ones who were 'making the huge sacrifice' as you put it. It was they, not the ones who packed up and went abroad, who paid 50p in the £1 marginal tax in the 80s and scrimped on meagre pickings, and it is that money that meant we still have an RTÉ at all.
If the ones who stayed and paid for it have no need for it, then it is a straight forward argument I would have thought to get rid.

end of the road

topper75 wrote: »

Given the contrasting economic situations between the two lands in those days, I would be quite confident that it was indeed my people, the ones who stayed, who were the ones who were 'making the huge sacrifice' as you put it. It was they, not the ones who packed up and went abroad, who paid 50p in the £1 marginal tax in the 80s and scrimped on meagre pickings, and it is that money that meant we still have an RTÉ at all.
If the ones who stayed and paid for it have no need for it, then it is a straight forward argument I would have thought to get rid.

it's not no as the people who rely on it need a simple and easy accessible link to their homeland so as to provide all of the information they require in an unbiassed manner, but from an irish perspective.
so the link will stay open for now at least, with a viable solution found in the future i'm sure.

Welsh Megaman

LW252 is back.


*hugs radio*

gctest50

my3cents wrote: »

............

The problem with Long Wave is that it is expensive on the old electricity bill ........

How much of a waste is the whole thing anyway ?

500kw (daytime) x say 72% efficiency ?

Infoanon

gctest50 wrote: »

How much of a waste is the whole thing anyway ?

500kw (daytime) x say 72% efficiency ?

A long time since 252 was at 500kw

Zird

Infoanon wrote: »

A long time since 252 was at 500kw

Fun fact, the last time 252 ran 500kw was for the all Ireland hurling final 2003. This was when RTE were still "studying" the possibility of launching R1 full-time on the frequency.

225LongWave

252 was silent until March 2004 ! TEAMtalk only used 250kW (100kW)
RTE put 2FMs Charity252 from 10th March included Amanda Brunker

September 2004 Radio1 put an Arts program on 252 on Sunday afternoon from 567mw
& RTL had not sold their 80% stake (RadioTara Ltd) to RTE until January 2004 !

Zird wrote: »

Fun fact, the last time 252 ran 500kw was for the all Ireland hurling final 2003. This was when RTE were still "studying" the possibility of launching R1 full-time on the frequency.

Welsh Megaman

More essential maintenance work coming shortly!

From RTE’s website…


RTÉ will carry out essential maintenance of the Long Wave (LW) transmitter in Clarkstown, Co. Meath from 15th June 2021 for two months during which period RTÉ Radio 1 will not be available on LW 252. These works are necessary to ensure that RTÉ can continue to broadcast RTÉ Radio 1 on LW.

Antenna

For the duration of this 2 month LW outage, was there any consideration to coming to an arrangement with the BBC/their transmission operator to temporarily transmitting RTE Radio 1 via the now former BBC Radio Ulster transmitter on 1341 MW ?? .

This would give 100% coverage of areas on Northern Ireland that cannot receive RTE Radio 1 on FM. There would also be coverage to nearby parts of Britain with a high number of Irish residents (such as Glasgow and Liverpool ) also nighttime coverage further away.

An arrangement happened in 2011 when the recently closed BBC World Service medium wave transmitter (648) on the east coast of England was made available to temporarily transmit the Dutch equivalent of RTE Radio 1 to the Netherlands after serious transmitter fires and other issues lead to a huge drop in its FM coverage in the Netherlands for a number of weeks.

kazoo106

I can only imagine the political storm that would cause if it were to happen !

Antenna

kazoo106 wrote: »

I can only imagine the political storm that would cause if it were to happen !

Though is it not already the case that RTE1&2 TV and TG4 for a number of years are broadcast from a number of transmitters within Northern Ireland (to cover much of the population who cannot receive cross-border Saorview
This without any uproar from Loyalists or anyone else that I am aware of ??

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/how-you-get-tg4-rte-one-and-rte-two

So I cannot see what the issue would be with a temporary use of a MW channel which is otherwise going to be disused after the ceasing of the BBC's info loop that has been broadcast for several weeks.

RTE could alternatively perhaps have put on a reduced power LW transmission from the Tullamore mast , which is still standing for now, if they were seriously interested in maintaining the LW service, which would also provide continued coverage of NI and nearby parts of Britain. Transmission equipment could have been moved within relatively short downtime, a lot less than two months.

Its unfortunate it has to go off during summer, when their might be more use made of LW by listeners. People might be visiting or holidaying in coastal areas that can be poor reception areas for FM, also the more fringe areas of RTE FM reception in Northern Ireland is more likely to be disrupted during summer by Sporadic-E propagation (as happened earlier today) of stations from other countries.
The GAA coverage etc

TAFKAlawhec

UK Broadcasting legislation doesn't permit audio-only broadcasting in the country that is not licenced by Ofcom, wherever that is FM, MW, LW, DAB or DVB-T(2) - however, this restriction does not apply to non-English speaking stations, nor does it apply to satellite or (I think) cable.

It's for the above reasons why RTÉ Radio 1 cannot broadcast presently on, say, DAB in the UK. It is also the reason why they cannot broadcast the same station, along with 2FM & Lyric on the RNI1 DVB-T2 multiplex, but RnaG can because their spoken output is not in English.

It is again the same reason why NPO Radio 1 in the Netherlands were able to make short-term use of the 648 kHz transmission facilities at Orfordness on England's east coast after the Smilde transmitter station fire - content wasn't in English.

For those reasons, it's why RTÉ can't at present make use of terrestrial transmission facilities anywhere in the UK, including any potential spare capacity at Lisnagarvey, unless it was granted a sound broadcasting licence by Ofcom and the regulation that it would present - and it's also the same reason why there's never been any type of "external" broadcasting made from the UK other than from the BBC using otherwise deprecated MW or LW facilities that was the case in some European countries e.g. Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland - otherwise I'd have reckoned that in the past the likes of CRI or Voice of Russia/Spuntnik Radio would have liked to have "purchased" airtime on 648 & 1296 kHz once the BBC left (well, they could have but they would have had to at least sacrifice any English language programming).

Radio via satellite i.e. DVB-S(2) is different, and it's why the four main RTÉ radio stations can appear on the Sky & Freesat EPGs.

Television is also different, which until recently had its licencing governed through the EU's Television without Frontiers directive. Post the UK leaving the EU, I contacted Ofcom on this matter and they said that nothing would change once the UK fully left the EU on 1st January 2001, so I'm assuming a special arrangement is now in place to let RTÉ1, RTÉ2 and TG4 broadcast in NI on the RNI1 multiplex.

thesandeman

That language restriction thing is mad!!

Mickey Mike

Can anyone have a guess as to how long RTE Radio1 will continue to broadcast on LW 252? The battle to switch it off is going on 8 years now, I also noticed with each passing time they are reducing the power output, think its down to 100kw and 60kw by night, I can't see a long term future for sure platform.

LW 252 is back on and sounding good on my SDR

http://emeraldsdr1.proxy.kiwisdr.com:8073/

dxhound2005

No signal 1.30 pm 17 Nov 2021.

dxhound2005

Back on at 6.10 pm. Unless there was some notice about a maintenance outage that I missed, the short duration suggests that it was a fault.

Antenna

It was a planned outage today for 'essential maintenance'. It went off at approx. 12:38 .

Antenna

JJ, Would be good if you put a link to the story too:

https://www.meathchronicle.ie/2024/01/25/moynalvey-community-exploring-potential-of-former-radio-mast-lands/

Was talk of Solar farm going there on at least part of it, as the existing electricity 38kV grid connection to the site could of course be used in reverse.

Especially considering RTE's financial difficulties, I do not think it is going to happen that part/all the approx 60 acres + building can be sold to the local community, the local GAA or anyone else for less than market value, as is suggested in the report..