4.00 Between the two embankments just beyond the Black Bridge before the line joined the electric line to Manchester there was an overgrown area which was often waterlogged. We called it the swamp and the only way into it was across the tracks but in summer we had many happy hours there it was our own adventure playground trying to make rafts out of old railway sleepers. Regarding the other lines a colleague living in Lymm said closing that line into Manchester was a big mistake it would have made a very good commuter line.
We were doing all this and alot more 35+ years ago on CB ...with ax2.5 packet @1200 baud.. Bbs ,txt, Aprs ..nothing new.. If they used vara ACchat ( basically Messenger over radio )as a base mode...they would have many more features including ..email if a port was open to the web..
This sort of thing really fires both my infrastructure and radio nerd neurons. I'd love to see inside it. Presumably it is fed from a digital feed over ADSL or fibre. Those ridge tiles seem to have been missing since at least 2016 (Streetview), so I suspect it may be intentional, with some other weatherproofing that isn't visible from the ground. I wonder the building's previous purpose was, as it seems to be rather hidden in the trees in older photos.
Went through an FM licence application and then subsequently a DAB application with OFCOM some years ago when I was involved with Bob FM / Jack FM / Hertbeat 106 based at the Pump house on the Knebworth estate. I confirm what you are saying. It's quite complex and there are a lot of hoops to jump through...!
Great discovery, and great that open source software is used. Some of the frequencies used is just one reason not to transmit on the extra band of a tri-band radio!
Help me with the math guys. They shut down all the AM transmitters (1 would cover the entire country) because it was so costly. Now you need 25 new digital transmitters to cover the Manchester area alone? And users MUST buy a DAB radio. How the F**K did this save money?
Wow they don't make it easy to setup a station, you kind of have to be an ex-politician to handle all the gooblygob, with polygon as the least of your worries.
In Ireland the forward thinking government decided to get rid of DAB. Its coverage was poor outside of dublin. I look forward to going to Northern Ireland where i can enjoy a smorgasbord of choice
Does anybody know that DAB+ is actually official in the UK ? As I have seen no Ofcom document, and have asked Ofcom when did they approve DAB to DAB+ comms licence, and what was this start date ? Its the same for alpha phone numbers, they are not Ofcom licenced or approved, as such unlawful under the Comms Act. I have asked and put in a concern to Ofcom.
Some of those lower frequencies are used by law enforcement in the USA while some of the 220 MHz are amateur and military aviation frequencies in the USA.
DAB is a failure, it already was right from the beginning. At that time internetradio was well established and available using the already fine mazed cell phone network. Granted, on the go it was maybe somewhat complicated but this problem quicky was dealt with as time went on. As the situation is at the moment over here in Holland, we still do not have a fine mazed network of DAB transmitters. Add to that transmitter powers that are not able to penetrate remote areas and you have a situation no one is happy with. It is due to the sensitivity of car radios that make the system work in cities and on motorways but definately not on regional routes and within homes. That’s exactly where the system fails. Due to the fact internetradio relies 100% on cell phone transmitter networks it is far more reliable, has the whole world at your disposal and offers world wide coverage. DAB only works within borderlines as for the stations you want to listen to. This makes the system totally unnecessary and exists only for the benefit of govenments that ask huge amounts of money for their licenses. The effect is most stations bet on mainsteam content, as a consequence most stations sound exactly the same. Same effect as on FM. It’s obvious by now I guess, it is definately not for me. It remains to be seen how long the system survives. Greetings, Willem, Hekelingen, Holland.
When I went to England is 2017. I got a radio and started scanning. I found SO many stations I was really astonished. I picked up Cyndicut FM and really enjoyed listening to it. I have video of it. I ran a pirate radio station here in Australia in 2010 but I was shut down within a month but I wasn’t raided. I just had a friendly knock on my door just one guy with a device in his hand and a badge from the ACMA. ACMA stands for Australian Communications and Media Authority. I had to shut it down and had to surrender the transmitter. I just got a warning letter which I still have today. Before then I ran a pirate TV station back in the mid to late 90’s. I ran it for over 3 years but then I got caught.
One smart thing about DAB is that it can use SFN (Single Frequency Networking) where a national multiplex can be transmitted on a single frequency across a whole country. The BBC national multiplex uses it on frequency 12B,
i like it when the editor uses tricks to see if anyone pays attention to the question .... are the geeks actually watching the footage . But by the reaction of lewis himself (you wonder if he knows what happened) , the smoke is pooring back inside the building and its done with eighter alian magic or playing the footage backwards .
From a governance point if view the way radio licensing is set up and the complex structures needed to compete is opaque and far from ideal. The very opposite of open government.
You can pirate on DAB so all is not lost! A bit more complicated and expensive, but you could get those old 10GHz links back out. On my TX aerial in the NW i used to be able to RX Dimension FM and IBC .
How about an explanation of how terrestrial DAB works? Here in the U.S., we have satellite-delivered Sirius/XM, which competed (Different protocols and satellite topologies) before they merged.
What’s the 4 masts used for near Ashton under Lyne running ground near Ikea used for? Used to run around that track for years not knowing why they’re there
Think I saw this on the MB21 website as someone had uploaded pictures of this site with its DAB aerial. Very interesting to see these small scale transmitters. I'd imagine this one would work OK as it's on favorable terrain, though the trees nearby seem too close to the aerial (in terms of height). I wonder how far transmissions get out from this site?
It depends on the aerial. If you only want local coverage, a single aerial with medium to high angle radiation pattern will cover the locals if it is low down. If it was high up, a downward tilt or something like a Slim Jim or J pole would be better to give a blanket coverage and not get too far. No need for higher gain aerials there.
DAB is a technology in search of a good application. It's not very good generally in moving vehicles and such. The frequencies are ones that most services would shy away from because of the size of the arial versus the ability to penetrate inside buildings and such. It's not really a great place. I am shocked really that there hasn't been more worldwide pressure to develop a new radio band close to the existing FM band that would operate entirely in digital and be accepted worldwide. The shortage of broadcast frequencies is a very artificial shortage.
The disused 68-88MHz would have been ideal for DAB and the coverage is really good on those frequencies. It works a lot better than 200MHz! I am not sure why they went for near 175MHz to 225MHz, I used a PMR service called Dolphin TETRA in Band 3 in the 1990s. Coverage was OK, but it was single digital channels in use on a shared repeater system from Winter Hill. No one wants DABradio now because of low audio quality, low bitrates and mono, all the stations playing the same music in a different order with continual adverts and silly announcements... People prefer to use their phone and stream audio as it is more convenient and sounds a lot better.
@@Bond2025 Yes, living in Canada at the time, I was very disappointed that the released band that held Canadian TV channels 2 to 6 were not made at least in part available. 2 was maybe a bit low in the 54mhz range, but 5 and 6 would have covered 76 to 88, which would have allowed for probably a dozen new transmitters in each market. It would have taken a few years to really catch on, but I could certainly picture modern cars with radios that covered 76 to 108 without issues. Doubly so as international, it is exactly the purpose.
Techmoan's video on DAB is sad, as unfortunately the powers that be seem to want to cram as many stations as they can in the space, with horrendously low data rates, and poor quality out of that.
With all those stations hooked up to the same audio feeds, just with different adverts played and different announcements. it really is in a terrible state now, I was SO disappointed when I got a DABradio after it first come out. I expected what was lied about on the false DABradio adverts about "crystal clear sound" and "Great audio Quality". I got lots of stations, only two local ones in stereo and everything else was mono, some sounding worse than MW. I had DABradio as standard in my car and used to listen to KISS as the bitrate was 160kbps and it was stereo. That last a few months and it went to 128kbps, then 112kbps and now I think it's 64kbps MONO. No one wants that rubbish quality. I wanted a DARradio with TWO speakers (for stereo) and could never understand why so many of the Pure radios were sold with just one. They knew everything was going to be low quality mono, so no point selling a radio with two speakers! Advertisers lied about DABradio to promote sales and they misled people. Many were fined and forced to stop lying about the audio quality, coverage and claims of "interference free crystal clear audio".
Can I ask you something that relates to the Ukraine war. We see the Ukrainian soldiers sufferring really badly being attacked by Russian Drones Is it possible do you think for troops to install an antenna maybe on a pole near their trenches that could broadcast the signals that would block/jam the communications signals to drones or maybe block disrupt the frequencies used to send signals back from the cctv camera on the drone back to the operators thus blindingthem. What I am getting at is can there be something to disrupt those signals that control the drones and the cctv signals. What would be needed in the way of an effective antenna?
I can't work out where the audiences for these local, small scale, stations come from. How many listeners do OFCOM expect a station to have to justify the use of the frequency?
I say if the people you pay taxes too can listen to us without our premission then why cant we listen to them so we can make sure our tax dollars are being used wisely.
Если вы вещаете что-то, что может не понравиться правительству, вас просто выкинут из пакета DAB. В то время как частный FM передатчик может продолжить работу.
scanning should be legal around the world. as a simply am/fm radio is a scanner. those “secret” corps in-crept there messages. so just not possible to know what was said. as to making usr of what you heard on a scanner. can be a crime in and of it’s self. and why bother scanning a phone, as it is in/-crepted. police now in-crept there radios. the average person does not have the money or reason to try and “break in” so the government has no reason to fear the population at large. but should fear another governments intrusion. i say this as a world wide belief. but some governments are either trying to make all people a criminal. or at a min over reaching there program.
