81–90 of 170 posts
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.
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.
Best we can do is privatisation and selling it to a party donor.
- some cryptobro
/s
I miss the days of jingles.
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.
I hate to rain on your parade, but a lot of interests want the low-frequency spectrum. It will absolutely never be allocated to amateur radio.
Seems like everyone's shutting down radio services. CHU and Weather radio in Canada too :(
These transmitters consume insane amounts of power. Per Wikipedia, that's 500 kW of rated transmission power for this one [1], so probably a solid megawatt of grid power input. At 30 ct/kWh, that's 300€ per hour, 7200€ per day and about 2.6 million € a year - for a customer base that is only decreasing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droitwich_Transmitting_Station
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to believe that civilisation has lost the ability to build longwave radio transmitters.
It's like the moon rocket. At any time we could have restarted that program from scratch and run it again, but what would the point be? We don't have the direct ability to make one but we have the ability to gain the ability to make one. If we did regain the capability it would probably be solid-state.
For that matter I'd be somewhat surprised if you can't simply buy a ready-made replacement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like the moon rocket. At any time we could have restarted that program from scratch and run it again, but what would the point be? We don't have the direct ability to make one but we have the ability to gain the ability to make one. If we did regain the capability it would probably be solid-state.
I don't think it's like that at all. I bet you could build a perfectly serviceable replacement at home without needing to spin up any special manufacturing equipment, using off-the-shelf components. For that matter I'd be somewhat surprised if you can't simply buy a ready-made replacement.
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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…
I wonder if you can couple to your local distribution grid, and not get arrested.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's like that at all. I bet you could build a perfectly serviceable replacement at home without needing to spin up any special manufacturing equipment, using off-the-shelf components. For that matter I'd be somewhat surprised if you can't simply buy a ready-made replacement.
A 500kW LF amplifier? Things do have to be designed to their individual requirements, you can't just buy a car stereo amp and turn it up to 1000.