BBC Radio 4 long wave reception problems etc.

[TrevorM6TSE]

My wife has just got a new car (to her) - an 07 plate Madza 2. We've been tuning the radio in and I was astounded by just how good the standard dash LCD displayed head unit is on both Long and Medium wave. A lot of stations including RTE1 on 252LW sound so good that you could quite easily listen all day instead of FM - It's just like the old days again...

NOT Radio 4LW though. I said to my wife on Thursday just how bad it's got again. Such a shame when all the French long wave, and the Irish are really clear and nearly FM quality on her head unit.

Trev

[Hybrid tellies]

Listening to R4 on 198Khz on my ITT/KB Tiny Super the audio quality seems to be good certainly an improvement on recent weeks.

[Radio Wrangler]

Just tuned into R4 LW...

I'm only a dozen or so miles from Wester Glen and the sibilance is obvious. I used an Icom IC765 with the crystal IF filter for AM fitted. It rolls off the higher audio components, so to hear sibilance implicates the transmission. Other stations were fine.

David

[paulsherwin]

If it's affecting Westerglen as well then it must be a distribution fault, as suspected previously.

[PaulR]

It did seem better last night.

[Hybrid tellies]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

If it's affecting Westerglen as well then it must be a distribution fault, as suspected previously.

Well at least this is encouraging. Its looking less likely to being a major transmitter or aerial problem at Droitwich. Surely it can't be that difficult to get a suitable broadcast quality link to the three Long wave transmitters.
It seems that some radios are coping rather better than others with this type of distortion. Some of the older radios rather better than the more modern offerings.

[Martin G7MRV]

Difficult - reasonably; Expensive - very much so.

Transport stream delivery is in the hands of a third party, in this case BT. Service level agreements determine how fast and to what quality repairs are done, its no longer a case of just asking them to fix things.

The essential point however, is one that will often be overlooked by people like us - audience share. How many people now listen, regularly, to LW? The answer, in terms of a percentage of audience, is staggeringly low. Most people who listen to R4 do so on FM (myself included), with the next highest listenership being on DAB. You can also do so on satellite, Freeview or over the internet. Even those who used to go to LW for the cricket have realised this. So its hard to justify the immense expense of a LW service against very low usage figures. R4 hasnt been considered by Govmt as essential for a long time, and even the shipping forecast is a legacy put on for entertainment rather than essential service nowadays (because it has a huge popular following!)

The fact is the general public dont even notice the problems, or where they do, they have enough choice to not care

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Martin G7MRV

Difficult - reasonably; Expensive - very much so.

It's not necessarily _that_ expensive - the big problem is that any major telco these days is only really interested in providing high-bandwidth dedicated point-to-point links - typically starting at 10Mbits/second - even if you only want a 128 or 256Kbit/sec throughput.

[Bandwidth is actually dirt-cheap these days: for the same amount of money I was paying for a 2Mbit/sec serial Megastream 10 years back I can now get Gigabit presented as a nice friendly Ethernet port]

I wonder what the actual distribution network is to the old LW transmitters? I really doubt it's still old-fashioned EPS25-type analog copper circuits.

I would like to think that the transmiter itself would have an audio low pass filter before the modulator. If sibilance is happening after this it's the transmitters fault, can't see how all the LW ones have the same fault or is the sibilance being received from another?

[Aub]

Originally Posted by Martin G7MRV

even the shipping forecast is a legacy put on for entertainment rather than essential service nowadays (because it has a huge popular following!)

As far as I know, the shipping forcast is only broadcast on longwave so, if it has a huge following, I'd expect longwave to be more important than it seems to be.

cheers

Aub

[Martin G7MRV]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

It's not necessarily _that_ expensive - the big problem is that any major telco these days is only really interested in providing high-bandwidth dedicated point-to-point links - typically starting at 10Mbits/second - even if you only want a 128 or 256Kbit/sec throughput.

You may like to know that one of the reasons this issue does get resolved occasionally is because my team push for the resolution! You may also be interested to know that my team are fully aware of the current incidence and are trying to get it resolved. There's only so much I can say on an open forum though. Suffice to say we are aware of it and are trying to get it fixed.

Originally Posted by Aub

As far as I know, the shipping forcast is only broadcast on longwave so, if it has a huge following, I'd expect longwave to be more important than it seems to be.

I should of course have said huge in relative terms! Relative to other R4 programs!

I listen to the shipping forecast on R4 FM, on the built in receiver in my smartphone!

[Aub]

Thanks Martin. We should leave you alone to get on with it then.

Cheers

Aub

[Martin G7MRV]

Ive done what I can, its in the hands of the team now. If it needs spares then it could well take a while!

[paulsherwin]

It does make you wonder why so much money is spent on a national high powered LW transmitter network when nobody has responsibility for ensuring a clean feed to the transmitters. It would be better to feed the transmitters from the existing 'Radio 4 LW' AAC internet stream rather than the present arrangement, whatever that is.

It would be better to feed the transmitters from the existing 'Radio 4 LW' AAC internet stream rather than the present arrangement, whatever that is.

Fine for 'ordinary' broadcasting but I thought R4 LW was one of the last line defence links, in that case a real wire link would make more sense (so would why all transmitters are affected).

[evingar]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

It would be better to feed the transmitters from the existing 'Radio 4 LW' AAC internet stream rather than the present arrangement, whatever that is.

Or tune in a DAB radio and connect it in to the LW transmitter
...... I'll get my coat

[Glowing Bits!]

Or how about using a satellite dish send/receive system? Just another thought.

[Radio Wrangler]

I think 'they' want R4 to continue to work as a back up communications system for the government to issue orders to the populace should WWIII break out, or flying saucers full of hungry lizards land in any number... just ask any conspiracy theorist.

Using DAB, FM or an internet feed would just takedown R4 if that feed fails.

David

[Joe Ingle]

I noticed the problem mentioned, reception was weak and distorted where I am (Edinburgh). Now seems to be booming out... Much better, as of around lunchtime on Friday 7th (yesterday).

[Radio Wrangler]

I agree, the quality here is now OK again, and the signal strength is much better.

I wonder if Westerglen was off and I heard what they were getting 'down South' a few days ago?

Thanks,
David