Their AM 549 transmitter has been off air for months, considering that they are officially meant to be an AM station with FM relays, shouldn't the non existence of AM be a serious breach of their BAI contract ?
Very very expensive.
A unit of electricity is used for every kilowatt of signal of transmission that you put out each hour. However, that is before you allow for inefficiency in generation of your signal. At best AM has 33% efficiency so your rig needs 3 units a kilowatt an hour.
In Spirits case their right has a 25kw output and goes out 24/7/365, not including any other electronics on site; receivers, processors, monitoring etc. You can do the sums from here.
A 'modern' solid-state AM TX can be around 80% efficient. Harris have a range which are effectively lots of small transistor amplifiers which are switched on and off to modulate the signal.
Still, it would be like burning 5 euro notes to heat a house. I can't find up-to-date commercial electricity rates on line. But at 30c a KWh you would be looking at €82k just to power a 25KW TX for a year.
AFAIK this licence was renewed within the past 18 months so it's a wonder why the AM part of it wasn't dropped considering that spirit have only ever done the most token effort at AM
It appears their license is for a national AM radio station, which is allowed to have low powered FM transmitters.
Is 25KW even powerful enough to cover the country properly? It would make more sense to transmit on Freedab, except BAI would not be happy.
This question was posted on the Ydun site 07 September.
549 khz Ireland – are they using the harris dx 25 or tram 50kw.
Does any person know?"
I wouldnd't be surprised if they are using 50. Good signals on all the Irish Kiwi SDR's and many in Scotland and England.
Years ago you would get official lists of public radio/tv TX transmitters. Now in the days of the internet that appears to have gone, or maybe disappeared into the noise.
Are you looking for a frequency list? If so frequencyfinder.org.uk is very handy and quite up to date
Regarding Spirit Radio, just wondering, why do they have two frequencies in Dublin, both from the same transmitter site? ( Three Rock )
One is 89.9 which appears to be the stronger one, and 92.1 which seems the weaker one?
Maybe somebody can enlighten me?
The 92.1 you are receiving is Drogheda, see below, this is a list of Spirit radio FM frequencies (20 frequencies) , in order of frequency. Only two sites share the same frequency (in the case of 90.1) :
87.6 Mullingar
87.7 Letterkenny
88.0 Tralee
89.8 Limerick
89.9 Dublin
90.1 Waterford AND Bray/Greystones
90.3 Ennis
90.4 Dundalk
90.5 Carlow
90.6 Athlone
90.9 Cork
91.2 Killarney
91.7 Galway
92.1 Drogheda
92.2 Newbridge/Naas
92.4 Navan
93.1 Kilkenny
93.4 Sligo
94.5 Wexford
95.8 MHz Clonmel
Then I was mistaken. I thought that the 92.1 would be from Three Rock as well. By the way, the 89.9 is clear and strong in Drogheda.
Indoor reception of the Dublin stations can be a bit awkward in Drogheda and you lose them almost entirely even in a car around the Bullring and St Mary's Bridge. LMFM (obviously), Today FM, Spirit and Newstalk are the easiest to get.
88.0 Tralee is discontinued, I've no idea why.
What's more, its a crap signal, on both FM and the appalling AM, always cutting in and out as you drive around, no listening pleasure at all. A launch on Saorview will be a pleasure.
Probably just on a career break like 549 frequently is
I hope it's not a 50 inch TV you have in the car 😲
I only tune into the station every now & then when I'm in the car but I was listening today & noticed the track skipping a lot anytime they play a song. Has anyone else noticed this?
Their 549kHz AM currently off the air again ... maybe just a short outage? we will see...
That TX is only a joke, even driving on the M6 its hard to make out what's been broadcast. Its only servicing Co, Monahan and boarder regions.
They probably got the electric bill.
Just wondering are they off air on 549 kHz permanently? Is it the high cost of electricity to maintain the AM transmitter?
Bearing in mind that they couldn't even pay their staff from early into their run and that the on air product has insignificant ad traffic on it in the main, we can safely say that the leccie is in need of a begging bowl brimming with a **** load of 50p's.
Thanks for the update. Yes, it's been rumored that financial issues are there.
Better off if they closed it and close down all the Mickey Mouse transmitters and use one and only one TX, that's the big MW 500kw in Tullamore (567) quickly before RTE knock it down.
Good idea. All they'll need now is a medium wave transmitter to put in there. The RTE one was removed and disposed off over a decade ago now.
All of the M6, and day and night? Good reception was being achieved over a wide area, as per my post #36.
Is 549khz operating at all now? I don't seem to hear anything or have they reduced the power even further
549kHz is blank here in Kerry (Gold 1458 from Manchester is listenable so 549 should be working if it was on any reasonable power)
88.0 in Castleisland is also off. 91.2 in Killarney remains on though
88.0 back on air today.
Unfortunately 88.00 is still off
Spirit 549am must be permanently off now
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