Dr David MillsRecording the last 20 days of BBC Radio4 on Long-wave.
I wonder why the shutdown was moved from September to June. Anyone know?
Carlo IU1KGS 📻@dtl I don’t know, but I’d imagine that the rising cost of energy due to the clown over the Atlantic has something to do with it.
@IU1KGS Maybe.
I can't find any indication if they are just cutting the modulation and leaving the carrier for the teleswitch signal, or what.
Robin Davies
Mike Knell@g7vkq @dtl @IU1KGS But it *is* anachronistic. FM has been around for 75 years or so. DAB+ (let alone original DAB) is 20 years old. Seems quite reasonable let 5XX go to a well-earned retirement, not least as so few people listen to it that the original USP of long wave - broad coverage to minimise cost/listener hour - stopped being true decades ago. Half a megawatt of power to serve a handful of people with a single programme when even, say, Crystal Palace analogue TV only ever had a total of 320kW going up the mast to feed 4 TV channels to 13 million people is just wasted money and resources. I’m pretty confident that Peter Eckersley would agree with that. :)
Cool story, but R4LW is anything but regional. It's a national service that these days does nothing but simulcast the same programme that's available on both FM and DAB nationally. And well, broader coverage of a regional service outside the region it's intended to serve is really just a nice-to-have, not a critical part of the service, no? @IU1KGS @g7vkq @dtl
@m when a natural disaster or a blackout hits a region that simulcast transmission suddenly becomes a strategic asset. It’s not a doomsday scenario nor an hypothetical, we’ve been without electricity for 12 hours the last serious snowfall in 2021, FM went down immediately, mobile lasted less than one hour.
We’ll agree to disagree on the usefulness of wide area coverage transmitters.