Thanks for doing community radio, I've got a lot of time for people who do it for the love, and of course what you put out for us, thanks for all radio.ALAN 💯👍
Tameside Radio had an antenna upgrade not long ago, they were talking about it in one of the shows…. I’ve done a few community pieces live on air, these stations are the real lifeblood of the community 😊
Just watched this and was reminded of when I was BT engineer back in the 80s working in Sheffields Radio Hallam frame room trying to provide a Private Wire..I was trying to find a spare pair and put a oscillator on a pair and was walking through reception to go to the green cab in the street and as usual they had a live radio feed playing in reception. All you could hear was my oscillator chirping away..I'd somehow put it on the 4 wire feed to the transmitter at Stocksbridge..oops 😮
Hello there That 5 gig antenna link in your first story can be behind a plastic sign or pointed out a window… I should know, I set up a link that way a few years ago. Only issue they had was a cat laying in front of the antenna in the window… easy fix, and no I did not kill the cat!!! I made a bracket to hang from the top of the pane of glass. 73’s DE N2JYG
I agree with N2JYG and was going to make the same comment about the antenna inside looking out a window. While, depending on the link, could be sub-optimal, it was done by my team in the 1980s with analog microwave in NYC
community radio is such a good thing. here in the U.S. we still have a lot of local not-for-profit stations that provide an excellent platform for incredibly diverse broadcast programming. great video, as usual. ❤
I absolutely love the fact that there is so much community radio not only in your community, but in your country as a whole. Here in the U.S., community groups have to jump through so many legal and financial 'hoops' that it's a struggle to put a community station on the air. The FCC and my country as a whole could learn a few things from yours when it comes to this. Keep up the amazing work you do on this channel!!!
Working for a WISP, it's really interesting to see a lot of this stuff. While we don't use that specific Ubiquiti equipment that you've shown, we do use them along with other vendors for point to point links. Radio is just cool in general and this channel is great.
Great to see Tameside Radio 103.6 mentioned, because someone very dear to me is from that area :) I also picked it up, as well as Mighty Radio Southport, in Flint from my uncle’s house once, which is quite high up; you can easily see the Wirral from the kitchen window. Having seen part 2 first, I was also pleased to hear about Silk 106.9, which I receive regularly in Deeside, every bit as much as I do Dee 106.3, being about five miles away. Will you be covering Dee Radio and the aforementioned Mighty at some point? I’d be very happy to see that! 73s and all the best :D
Fond memories of doing a community RSL in North Manchester between 1998 and 2002. Organising a "taxi" end fed dipole for 87.7MHz to replace the failing folded dipole. I must check if either is still attached to the building. No STL. The exciter and power amp were in the next room to the studio and the aerial was on the roof. Having to resolder much of the studio overnight because moving anything broke a load of dry joints, all whilst the station manager (RIP Jonathan) fed me cornflakes to keep me going.
The antanna at 4:12 is a is Ubiquiti NanoBridge M5 5GHz Antenna , its a ip wifi link, and it has the support to connect to any 5ghz wifi point. Ther's most likely a old wifi link and they fiber to the transmitter, and a pc at the transmitter site
That's an interesting broadcasting environment under the UK's licensing structure. I think the only thing that compares in the USA are the low-power AM (MW) licenses that are strictly for local rural markets. I'm unsure if there's similar for the FM band.
Interesting that you mention circular dipoles being ideal for medium and low power stations. I don't know about over there, but here in North America, we commonly use splitters to divide the total output power of the transmitter into MULTIPLE circular dipoles on the same tower. That includes the most powerful FM station in the world, WBCT in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 320,000 watts into six circular dipoles, 780 feet above the area's average terrain. And I can tell you from experience, living about 70 miles away and using a less than ideal loop antenna, those circular dipoles are certainly doing their job well, because I can hear WBCT loud and clear 24/7, even though I'm technically in their fringe coverage area. The RDS even decodes!
The Lindenblad type aerial, awful things in my opinion. 4 dipoles in parallel at 45degrees means a huge MINUS dB figure and having to use fairly big power amps to overcome the loss and achieve a reasonable ERP. I really wouldn't waste my time with one as coverage is nowhere near as good as a stacked dipole arrangement or stacked circular polarised aerials. Why put 600Watts in, waste all that electric with much bigger power amps, splitters and coax and have less coverage than using 4 times less to get the same coverage for stacked circular polarisation aerials OR 6 to 8 times less through a single dipole! I've never understood why people want circular polarisation now anyway, vertical is how most people have aerials. Even horizontal has died out.
In certain types of terrain they do perform well but when it's round the NW no need and yeah they have -0.5dbd but the pisser is 25w erp requires 200 odd watts at the antenna what a power hog.
Have shared your video to Facebook groups and pages dedicated to community radio and radio station and the post has been approved by the admin. Really enjoy your videos and drone footage. I manage Faversham Community Radio CIC "Radio Faversham" online radio station in Kent, we have a RU-vid channel also.
How hot did it get ?? we have for the whole month of July been normal into the 90s with heat indexes into 105 Deg F Humidity is awful here night its 99% . we tried a circular polarised here and it was not very good at all being out in the country They seem to be a urban antenna best its now in NYC with a clamp on mount on a fire escape . we now have a Norwalk .96 wave its great !! we are at 789 ft above sea level and a 100 ft tower heard far and wide . wish here in the US they had a community radio program . they do have LPFM but its impossible to get a license . cheers to u other side of the pond .
The long antenna you show at 11:41 could be an old mobile phone in building donor antenna. I come across a few of these and they were mainly used back in 2G days 900/1800Mhz. Where a large company had many phone on a single network the network would install inbuilding coverage. This is long before Femto and Small Cells. You used to see similar at the road sides where the network wanted to cover a dip in the motorway but could not justify a new cell to cover 100m dead spot.
It’d be cool to have a look at the DAB and FM Transmitter at CCSW in South Cheshire, that broadcasts The Cat on FM and the Crewe & Nantwich DAB Multiplex. I’d be cool to see what my stations system looks like antenna wise.
Randomly, that looks like the exact same 2Bd Ant (3:50) that Mix-up 106.4 used to use at the beginning of the 2000s. From 24W to the 100w Days. Veronica Transmission equipment. If memory serves.
I tried to listen to the FM bands you gave us, on my receiver, but they just don't give out the station names often enough, or clearly enough, so I didn't know what station I was listening to.
I still have one( well for each channel) 900mhz analog STL link still in use with parabolic antennas but everything else I changed to internet based. Comrex for the win. We are still local stations and some local talent but the music and often the DJ comes from a national network. My smallest FM is 1,000 watts and the largest 100k. We use circular antenna bays stacked until we get the gain we need. This seems to be standard around here but it seems most of the ones you cover are a few hundred to few thousand watts which puzzles me. I guess it works out better to use a bunch of small ones compared to just a few massive ones?
How many people are thought to be listening-via broadcast? The footprints are fairly small, limiting the number of people who can easily receive the broadcasts. We don’t have this sorta thing here and broadcast radio is dying….everyone going to specific Apps or apple radio/tune in.
I'd be interested to know if all the coverage prediction plots featured in this video (presumably generated by the 'Radio Mobile' software) are based on 64dBuV/m (good stereo coverage) & 54dBuV/m (stereo coverage, subject to interference) for community radio licences, or on the 54dBuV/m (good stereo coverage) & 48dBuV/m (good mono) for all other radio licences (e.g. BBC, and commercial local, regional and national radio), particularly as the Oldham FM plot shown in this video doesn't match up with that Ofcom has published........??
I was hoping to find out what happened to MyTameside music with DJ,s Den Dingler, Frank McMahon etc but sadly this video, good as it is,has told me nothing.Is there anyone out there with an answer/explanation as to what happened to it and when/if it will ever return?
Hmm? On digital radio, there are a number of stations on the same frequency, if that's what you mean? Or are you referring to the 8.33kHz air band spacing?
i receive Wythenshawe FM 97.2 here in Bolton NR farnworth and tameside 103.6 booms over here also oldham 99.7 too but that station is boring. also get all fm from Altrincham, that station is also garbage...😃
