Medium Wave Transmitter Closures.

[winnem1]

Goodbye to medium wave?
The BBC have stopped transmitting radio essex on AM and sugjest using DAB or FM to listen. Not a good idea if you live in Romford where you get no reception on either DAB or FM.

Mike

[Nuvistor]

Originally Posted by winnem1

Not a good idea if you live in Romford where you get no reception on either DAB or FM.

Mike

Out of interest why no FM, Wrotham doesn’t seem that far away, local screening?

[winnem1]

I mean no Radio Essex on FM available. Other stations are OK.

Mike

[emeritus]

My cousin lives in North Romford and their terrestrial TV reception is so poor that they use cable.

[greenstar]

I can't agree that everything has it's time and we have to move on. That may be the current attitude and appropriate for some things, but I believe to be erroneous for others.
If something works well it can have a role. There are creatures alive now essentially the same as in the Cambrian era (Lingula, a bivalve brachiopod). They survive because they work very well and have a niche.
The human race needs imho to recognise utility and simplicity, over complexity, commercial advantage and getting people to chuck useful old things away to buy new flakey stuff of dubious value! We are gulled in thinking we must forever buy new things.
AM radio could be an exciting experience. In principle on one simple dial the whole of Europe is available, and can be heard easily. The internet does not do this. Usually only English speaking websites turn up in a search. That leads to an insular mentality and a closing of the mind to other languages and countries. An AM radio, MW or SW, should open a window on the world as it always did, allowing reception as it is broadcast from other nations.
I think in the 30's many people did so.
Fine, develop new tech, but at least make it work (my DAB radio does not receive most of the stations that come up, 'not available', most frustrating). And what is wrong with continuing to use established and effective technology as a solid back up?
I would say the problem is more that the population are increasingly consumers who must have new bells and whistles when what we have is perfectly adequate. That is wasteful but not adaptive. The over complex tends to die out. That's my rant!
I suspect we will come to regret the loss of AM broadcasts.

[Radio Wrangler]

I'm not sure what argument you could get into the heads of people who do not listen on medium wave, to get them to do so. Without an audience the BBC will feel it is unjustified, and the advertisers on commercial stations will feel it is a waste. The removal of the stations is a simple economic consequence of the audiences removing themselves.

Whatever arguments are put forward for the retention of such broadcasts have to be put to the right people, and we aren't they.

David

[Junk Box Nick]

I can get all wistful about evenings spent tuning across the MW band; the stations and programmes I found by accident. Very few people would get remotely excited about that now – in actual fact very few people were excited about such things back then – in reality we were nerds long before the word had come into the lexicon. It was of its time and (fortunately) I just happened to be there.

The great thing about AM and SW radio was all you needed was a receiver and perhaps a decent aerial to have a window on the world.

Okay, we laughed at Tirana and the propaganda from Moscow, and possibly stuff from Radio Free Europe going the other way, but you learned about different countries and different points of view and it wasn’t the free-for-all melee that is the internet.

It was a private experience and the only way anyone might know you were listening was if you requested a QSL card. (I had a prize I won on an offshore station closely inspected by the authorities but fortunately the 4am knock on the door never came.)

FM and DAB are essentially local and the internet can be controlled – and a trail is left of the pages visited. The cynic in me thinks this state of affairs could be very useful to those in certain quarters in certain situations.

Ultimately, everything has to move on for good or for bad – it’s what makes the world, or, rather, economies, go round.

[AdrianH]

Just switched on my little Ferguson Flair ready to listen to a bit of MW, and Radio Lancashire on 855 KHz Blackburn and Burnley is now broadcasting the shutdown message saying go to FM Digital or Internet etc.

Another quiet patch on the dial.

Adrian

[Radio Wrangler]

It's a 'tipping point' effect

Once the economics go bad, they go bad for all stations and the end will come faster than expected. I think we're entering the era of the pantry transmitter to allow collections to be played.

The real question is what do we use the medium wave band for now?

Nothing is a real possibility from officialdom. Anything would seem better than that.

Maybe there is a case for a multichannel pantry transmitter design, something that takes several stations off the internet/DAB or whatever, and populates a number of medium wave slots? But as you know it's artificial, it won't give the feeling of exploration we once had.

David

[Cruisin Marine]

I know they are not closing either BBC Jersey or Guernsey, this is because once a month they have the parliamentary chamber discussions on AM only once a month.
It would be terrible for all those darlin' politicians to think they might be talking to themselves lol

I love Medium Wave, but, if it goes- all I am concerned about is that is is offered to UK Broadcasters, Hobbyists or Amateurs. They should not give away our national frequency allocations via the ITU until all options have been completely exhausted.

[Sparky1]

Hi All, I've just found out to my dismay that I can't receive gold radio in Nottinghamshire area any more. It was my main station for testing my vintage and home made diy ta7642 radios. Also Philips ee8 radios, and sinclair micromatic. plusd crystal sets etc. Is medium wave am dying on it's feet in this country? I'm very upset about it. I'm sure it was transmitting only a few weeks ago. kindest regards Phill W (sparky1)

[radioman]

I heard about this a couple of days ago but haven't seen it mentioned on the forum :-
https://radiotoday.co.uk/2023/11/bau...thern-england/

I was listening to Ken Bruce on Greatest Hits Radio on our local 1035kHz service (formerly West Sound) just this week !

Andy

[Station X]

Threads merged.

[dave walsh]

Greenstar makes a good point about the "replacement" DAB service not being consistent [145*], though David [146* 149*] has been very much realistic [along with others] about "progress". A multi channel Pantry TX would be possible but not convincing as he says and yes the MW audience is just not there! You can get laughed at by yoof for carrying a newspaper [for news] these days but it's better than carrying a knife! Trying to hold back the tide of rapidly disappearing analogue broadcasting is reminiscent of King "Canute" [possibly a good ident name for a digital station that had a vintage outlook?]

My recollection is that when a possible lack of broadasts for our vintage sets first became a concern [maybe 15 years ago] the focus was simply just on that, ie how we could overcome the lack of input either by recorded material cable [directto just to the spkr], via a gram/pick-up socket or the Pantry Micro TX's covering the household [like Wi-Fi in fact]. At first Chas Miller and others made vintage versions of these using valves and scrap box bits that worked pretty well. I knew about Pantry TX's but hadn't realised that might be a good solution in terms of a broadcast signal to all sets, at MW/LW or VHF, even with the drawback that it would be one station at a time. [Not such a problem really if you often listen to the same broadcast]. Of course that doesn't resolve the the current concerns about local radio stations [and others] being withdrawn on MW but that social/political change didn't seem to be anticipated then.

It's easy to regard "digitisation" as a negative in this way but it has it's own specific downside. Events from Katrina onwards demonstrate that a loss of "news" or personal contact, when digital sources go down, can be just as distressing or more than anything else because we have become so reliant on them!. Analogue communication may not just be a thing of the past [in the future!]

Dave W

Dave W

[G6Tanuki]

The demise of the local/national high-power MW broadcasters does at least benefit those of us who are interested in MW DX; quite a few Spanish, North African and Central European stations can now be logged which would in the past have been blanketed by UK based broadcasts.

US MW/AM stations, alas I've not logged any recently, which is annoying: I always liked tuning in to the night-time 'shock jock' stations.

Pragmatically, things move on. I'm sure there were people who mourned the demise of telegrams, who complained about the removal of disused phone-booths, that no movies were being released on VHS any more, and that their local Blockbuster rental-shop closed. Equally, the shift from DSB AM to SSB on the HF bands, or the migration from AM [tuning low to high] to FM on VHF, and there were equally those older ham-types who viewed the coming of VHF repeaters as the End of the World As We Know IT(tm).

Life goes on. I'm not going to advocate that MW/LW [and indeeed FM] broadcasting should be perpetuated just for the benefit of a vanishingly-small listener-base. If you want to listen to stuff on your old radios then Bluetooth them or build a pantry-transmitter.

My local friendly antennas-man [who I get in to do ham-radio stuff because I am afraid of 'working at height'] tells me that a lot of his calls these days are from people wanting redundant FM, UHF-TV aerials and satellite-dishes removed, with nothing put in their place. He doesn't carry any FM aerials any more, because he was only getting a couple of requests a year for one to be put up....

Like I said, evolution in action.

Tonight I'll be hoping to hear the 549KHz Algerian-based station (relay of Jil FM) which usually comes in well. You'd expect it to when they're running 600KW.

[Valvepower]

As per the Bob Dylan track… The Times They Are A-Changin'

Terry…

[2000 type]

On the plus side, I can now receive a good signal from a local hospital radio service (Radio Redhill, 1 Watt on 1431kHz) who play some excellent '60s and Country music without annoying commercial adverts or endless inane presenter waffling. They even chuck in the occasional PAMS jingle where appropriate.

Silver linings and all that!

[Andrew2]

I'd settle for the PAMS jingles! Wonderful things.

[Julesomega]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

Tonight I'll be hoping to hear the 549KHz Algerian-based station (relay of Jil FM) which usually comes in well. You'd expect it to when they're running 600KW.

The Algerian '2eme Chaine' has been coming in well from about Lunchtime on 252 lately, even listenable on a small portable

[Julesomega]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

Tonight I'll be hoping to hear the 549KHz Algerian-based station (relay of Jil FM) which usually comes in well. You'd expect it to when they're running 600KW.

Listenable here at the moment "JIL - Cent pourcent Rap!", some announcements in English
Live stream for confirmation at my.radioalgerie.dz/fr/jilfm a few seconds behind the RF