BANDSCAN THREAD

PI code recycling

Seems for Christmas FM, nothing on 103.8 at all and nothing on 105.9 either so Waterford and the South East seem to be the land that Christmas forgot

Am I right in thinking that there was no pirate activity at all in Dublin over the weekend, following the recent raid on Connect FM and the apparent raid on The 90s Network? I reckon the likes of ABC and Retro FM could have been okay for Sunday, as there tends not to be any raids on Sundays, maybe Saturdays too. I think MW/AM pirates or even less targeted these days, such as the likes of Radio Daniella.

Was there any pirate activity outside Dublin, such as the two Co. Meath-based FM pirates Energy and RetroNow, and border county MW pirates? What about that dance pirate from Tralee?

Edit: It will be interesting to see if there is any pirate activity in Dublin in the week following Christmas, as there has been in previous years.

Is the RFMN system similar to the one used by Ofcom? A bunch of fixed points that mean you can triangulate any signal almost instantly?

might also be worth reminding people that it’s an offence to possess a rig even if it’s switched off (as seemed to be the case here). Be careful out there pirate folk.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cJJLvIDRmIw

regarding Xmas, the Wexford 103.8 is definately back on air. When it returned i do not know but heard it whilst travelling earlier this evening

According to a source, the Kerry 105.0 is still a silent carrier tonight however

107 3 was a strange frequency. An sure Classic 80s will be back on as a temp in January.

Well now… that setup is certainly a game changer. The cat and mouse chase has gone high tech and automated.

Good job that system was not available in the 70's and 80's or we would never have had the vibrant pirate scene that our current broadcast media landscape was influenced by.

The P+T officials would never have been standing outside the Sands Hotel wondering where that carrier on 101.5 was coming from !

Not to mention the occasion 'raid' on the wrong address in the 90s......

back in those days they just had to track the complaints about TVI effecting Channel 4 and BBC2 (usually around the Inchicore area!)

Interference to the cable system 'Cablelink ' was an issue back in the day ,primarily due to a poor quality cable infrastructure and operating FM transmitters near housing estates . To go above 106FM was avoided and it was only when Sammy with his multiple low power transmitters started on 106 to 107 that others ventured.

Radio Dublin could be heard on the BBC2 TV channel on cabllelink when BBC 2 was off the air and occasionally the audio broke through when the BBC 2 test card was on.

Ironically RTE wiped BBC 2 TV channel off the network a few years later but that's another story !

True… although it was possible to view TV inside the bunker at 58 Inchicore road.

I remember Cooke pulling out the tv from the cupboard that it was built into and there was a tangle of chokes, caps, screened metal box's and ferrite rings attached to the back of it - all filtering out the spurios from the various transmitters. He used it to show to any neighbours that complained, how reception was OK in the station, so the interference must be a problem with their set.

Having said that though, my father was a soldier in nearby Clancy Barracks and they couldn't make a phone call there without hearing the latest chart hits over the line.

How far from the church was the transmitter ??

(this being about the original 1980s Q102 in case anyone is puzzled)

The Church to Q's site approx 900metres , TX was 1kw.

The drifting you refer to was the story printed in the 'radio radio' book , it says that's Novas 50kw drifted during a snow storm and the P+T threatened to raid unless the transmitter* was turned off (and not switched back on iirc)

There are a number of issues with the story , primarily that the 50kw had been switched off long before this snowstorm ,as an aside it was switched off before dusk every day.......

The P+T may have made a phone call.....but it wasn't during a snowstorm and it wasn't because of a drifting transmitter*..…

Sunshine did have an issue with their replacement 531 after the raids but this was quickly switched off.

AM transmitters can drift , and cause a lot of interference , one transmitter was notorious for acting up every so often , RTE 2s 1278 in Dublin, irrespective of the temperature !

*The '50kw' AM transmitter

It looks like it was silent in Dublin on the pirate front this weekend (like last weekend), unless anyone knows any different.