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Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

economist.com

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Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#111

Post by wartywhoa23 »

bilegeek wrote: post #29

IMO, when the last LW transmitter shuts down, the whole band needs to be reallocated to hams. Realistic small-ish antennas are shockingly doable with a capacitance hat, loading coil, and counterpoise.

The witness of the conspiracy practice in me says that the opposite is more likely to happen in the world whose govenments strive to limit its ineterconnectedness and turn it into a set of isolated anclaves not unlike Orwell's Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania.

The next logical step in that direction would be cracking down on HAM, not liberalization of it.

We'll see.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#112

Post by inquirerGeneral »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #111
bilegeek wrote: post #29

IMO, when the last LW transmitter shuts down, the whole band needs to be reallocated to hams. Realistic small-ish antennas are shockingly doable with a capacitance hat, loading coil, and counterpoise.

The witness of the conspiracy practice in me says that the opposite is more likely to happen in the world whose govenments strive to limit its ineterconnectedness and turn it into a set of isolated anclaves not unlike Orwell's Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania. The next logical step in that direction would be cracking down on HAM, not liberalization of it. We'll see.

[dead]

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#113

Post by myotheraccount2 »

aeonik wrote: post #73
microgpt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought hams already had plenty of bands. Is there not one in this range?

There is a very small slice that amateur radio gets in this band, in theory it would be nice to have a bigger slice, but honestly, building antennas for this band to transmit anything worthwhile would be pretty hard. My 7 Mhz antenna (HF, 40m band) is 67 feet long, and goes across by whole house. The smallest antenna you could get away with for LF would be hundreds to thousands of feet long. You might be able to go s…

Here you go. https://theradiosource.com/products/antenna-630pd.htm

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#114

Post by icosian »

sidderl wrote: post #81
KaiserPro wrote: post #80

There is precisely one thing that keeps 198LW online: economy seven. I think the reason why its been left on so long is that it took so long to migrate to digital meters https://tradehelp.gdhv.co.uk/support/solutions/articles/7900... I am also annoyed that I missed the last signal.

Not quite the same as hearing it live, but the final programme transmission has been recorded here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlflWWZpb30

I'm sad to hear the service has gone off the air. I was a constant listener to BBC Radio 4 on 198 kHz growing up in Dublin. It was a valuable window onto the world.

Listening to the last transmission there, I note that the continuity announcer, (the Irish) Al Ryan, signed off with 'oíche mhaith', i.e. 'goodnight' in Irish. A nice nod, I think, to all the former LW listeners in Ireland.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#115

Post by ballooney »

pfdietz wrote: post #92
yakkers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.) and NDB beacons. At least in VK/Australia, there’s the 2200 meter band, but it’s quite limited (1W power limit, CW/digital only, 135.7–137.8 kHz). At the same time, as much as I don’t want the AM broadcast band to die, I’d love an amateur band in the lower…

> Particularly time signals Doesn't GPS utterly replace this?

In no way whatsoever, for low power devices.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#116

Post by mschuster91 »

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #76
mschuster91 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that emitted power, consumed power, or effective radiated power? Going by [1], emitted power. [1] https://www.bbceng.info/Operations/transmitter_ops/Reminisce...

I can't edit my previous comment (which incorrectly implied that the 3 stations at Droitwitch are going out of the same antenna), but I've done more research and have more information. Droitwitch LW's antenna uses a T-aerial suspended between two 210m steel masts acting as massive capacitive top-loaded vertical monopole. The signal isn't beamed or shaped, it propagates omnidirectionally and this style of antenna offe…

Your math looks reasonable but eh, it's 34 °C indoors and 38 °C outdoors...

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#117

Post by hylaride »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #102
K0balt wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they wanting to build? It’s hard to put much information on lower frequencies, afaik?

I bet it will have to do with the military, almost inevitably.

With the risks to GPS becoming more acute, many jurisdictions are seriously entertaining bringing back a modern version of LORAN.

There's also high frequency firms that want to muscle their way into shortwave frequencies as they can have lower latency between trading sites (eg NYC and Chicago) since the physical infra isn't a direct link as the crow flies (as well as the speed of light being slowed in fiber optic lines). They've even restarted some microwave links, as they don't necessarily need a lot of bandwidth, just latency.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#118

Post by gosub100 »

mybrowsercache wrote: post #59
fredoralive wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit of hindsight bias there, DAB was first developed in the mid 1990s, ubiquitous fast wireless IP in everyone’s pockets is at least a decade, perhaps nearer to 20 years in the future. There are quite a few transitionary technologies that we needn’t have developed had we just waited for something better to come along (but without the R&D into some of them…). (Also doesn’t analogue FM also kinda cut off fairly abruptl…

FM stays listenable even with heavy distortions when you drive out of range and you can decide for yourself when you no longer tolerate the signal. Digital doesn’t give you warnings and just goes silent

Especially so with digital public TV. its absolutely unusable. and now they can't stand that people want to share sports broadcasts, so they are updating it again to add encryption. I can't believe anyone watches it.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#119

Post by bestham »

cogman10 wrote: post #99
Peanuts99 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital radio was always going to be crap, it doesn't degrade gradually as signal gets worse They should have just put all the money into a better 4G network and ran radio through that.

> it doesn't degrade gradually as signal gets worse That has a lot more to do with the dated implementation and less to do with digital radio. There are a number of digital broadcasting techniques which can minimize and compensate for noise, including a slight delay with a signal correction and fault tolerant codecs. DAB was implemented using the old MPEG2 audio codec. DAB+ uses the now 15 year old codec HE-AAC which…

> DAB was implemented using the old MPEG2 audio codec. No, it was MPEG 1 layer 2 often at 192 kbps. Later they switched to HE-AAC with DAB+.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#120

Post by aeonik »

microgpt wrote: post #89
aeonik wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very small slice that amateur radio gets in this band, in theory it would be nice to have a bigger slice, but honestly, building antennas for this band to transmit anything worthwhile would be pretty hard. My 7 Mhz antenna (HF, 40m band) is 67 feet long, and goes across by whole house. The smallest antenna you could get away with for LF would be hundreds to thousands of feet long. You might be able to go s…

Does stapling it to your neighbours' fence lines and painting it like the wood count as creative? I wonder if you can couple to your local distribution grid, and not get arrested.

I just string the antenna across my attic.

Coupling into my power upstairs is a bit of a problem sometimes though.

Pirating power is something I've heard that happens, but I looked it up, and couldn't find an actual cited example of someone doing it via induction.

Plenty of people doing it via extension cords and device tampering though.

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