The valve kit is probably being maintained a bit like a working museum at this stage.
If a transmitter installed in 2011 is EOL, then so is just about every other LW transmitter.
As far as I know, Romania's current 153 rig from Harris RF has been there since 2003. Medi 1 has a Thomson rig installed in 2009 and now running at a fraction of its rated power. Chaine 3 from Algeria had a new Tx installed in or around 2012 I believe and that has been intermittent for a while now (although to be fair, the signal was bombing it into Limerick last Friday night).
I don't know how old the Polish 225 rig is, or the Iceland or Danish ones for that matter, but the latter two are scheduled for closure in the near future so the age of the hardware is irrelevant at this point.
And then there's the Mongolian LW transmitters which are at least forty years old (apart from one in the far-west of the country which was replaced by a Transradio rig about ten years ago and allegedly off the air anyway) and held together with whatever their equivalent of baling twine is. Multiple breaks in transmission per day have been reported by those who monitor the SDRs on a regular basis.
Personally I think that we are well into the last full year of LW broadcasting...
I think we're missing the point here. There are literally several people in England who would love to listen to Liveline, and there's no viable way to achieve that without a colossally powerful transmitter operating at huge expense.
They could have announced that they were going to broadcast on longwave using the Internet. They would have needed to do it a few days ahead to allow people enough time to buy a longwave radio.
It's probably already stripped of it's copper to pay the DG's golden handshake 🤪
RTE should have provided better coverage for the hurling yesterday, considering their past ability to broadcast internationally using shortwave airtime for the all Ireland finals.
The Tullamore mast was taken down today (Tue July 25th) ...
https://www.westmeathindependent.ie/2023/07/25/watch-offalys-tallest-man-made-structure-is-demolished
RTE Video
3 videos here from different angles -- seems the building got hit at the end .
https://www.leinsterexpress.ie/video/pictures---videos/1256840/watch-dramatic-scenes-as-midlands-landmark-is-brought-crashing-to-the-ground.html
🙄
The internet beats shortwave hands down, it's why it's all but dead.
BBC World Service on Shortwave in Europe shut down something like 20 years ago. Deutsche Welle followed suit shortly afterwards. They both had a 24 hour service on short wave.
Both still exist, but on the internet.
Shortwave isn't really dead, just a few freaks use it, religious evengelists from America, the Chinese political indoctrination to a certain extent, some Euopean public sector broadcasters are on for a few hours only, RFI from France probably the most notable one.
This was posted in the radio forum, she's gone! No future now.
May Atlantic 252/Radio1 LW Rest in Peace.
Maybe our resident re-reg troll will now give up?
Or maybe he will start a new petition to get the mast put back together...
I guarantee you with my life, it will not happen.
Of course not but it I won't be surprised if the "Save RTE LW" brigade suggest it...
Is there any good footage of the demolition of the mast, like the one in Tullamore. Its all very surreal.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t because I had no idea it was happening, I’d say many others didn’t either. I know a poster on here said it was to go but to be honest I didn’t really believe it until it happened! Simply because I heard nothing concrete.
I saw this on Gavan Reilly's twitter feed...
The building took a good hit
EDIT: Dang didn't know about 252 coming down too. That was a well kept secret.
When MW radio was shutdown in 2008, RTÉ gave it good bit of coverage on news.
By contrast, when LW was shutdown in April, it didn't even merit a mention on the RTÉ website (there was a report earlier in year how the decision to shutdown has been made).
Similar situation with the masts - decommissioning of MW mast was mentioned yesterday on 6.01, but nothing for today's LW mast demolition. Odd, given the all the history behind 252.
Really does seem like RTÉ wanted to avoid any and all publicity around LW/252
While I've known 567MW mast was to be demolished now for quite some time, the actual shock is hitting me now with the demolition of the 252LW mast so soon. I could understand RTE's motive for doing so, ie, "Let's get this down quick before any campaign starts.
Its all done and dusted, Cork's 729MW will be next at some point.
Because of all the political BS surrounding it, UK pensioners who have digital TVs but can't work the internet...
It's hard to believe that after the years of service the Transmitter gave to RTE radio 1 nobody in Radio 1 mentioned it in any way.
Ray D'Arcy gave a fleeting belated mention today in this interview - at the 15m30s mark:
August marks 100 years since the first licensed broadcast of radio in Ireland, Eddie Bohan tells us about the 2BP Centenary event. - https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22280545/
They wanted to keep in quiet , no tender either seems to have been hidden behind the Tullamore tender
Was a big mistake to knock summerhill tower , I can understand Tullamore , but summerhill had new Insulators and Mast and Transmitter which in AM terms new
Mast lights correction on my last
The infrastructure should have been kept its only three months since shutdown. That decision was too soon and it doesn't seem to have been RTE who made that decision the government communications department say its RTEs choice and noting to do with them for an email I received. RTE said there are no plans to demolish. Very confusing who made decision.
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