what is the max poower output of 252

[radio free king]

could someone tell me what is the max power of 252 and I mean at full power. also what is the power of 198 in the UK

[Original Tyrone Gobshite!]

It is supposed to be 500kW during the day and 100kW at night.

BBC Radio 4 LW from Droitwich in Central England is supposedly now down to 400kW of power from 500kW. Two smaller scottish transmitters, Westerglen (Central Scotland) and Burghead (North Scotland) both run on 50kW

[Guest]

252
"It is supposed to be 500kW during the day and 100kW at night. "

They seem to be running 100kW all the time now.
judging by the signal strength meter on my tuner
(No change anymore at 6PM)

presumeably finances are not there to run it on the full daytime power

Just because a station is assigned a particular amount of power does not mean they will use the full power.

BTW apart from this Algeria in the background is a hell of a lot more noticeable with a talk format than when 252 had a music format as Atlantic!

[Guest]

I agree with that!

It's weaker than it used to be in Buckinghamshire (around 30 miles NW of London) during the day (often with an awful whistle), and at night it's almost unlistenable (probably due to Algeria's rebuild of their transmitter - is it a higher output than it was in the Atlantic days?)

In Sussex (south east coast) it's very weak in the day (all kinds of crackles are audible even with a tranny in the middle of an open field away from all electrics!!!), and at night - just don't bother trying to listen!

Oh yes, and in the good old 252 days, when I was permanently living in Bucks, I used to listen day and night to Atlantic. Weak signal never seemed a problem, and I used to listen to 'Love It or Shove It' every night at 10pm, with no noticeable Algeria interference, and fading was there but hardly noticeable.

Presumably the loud non-stop-music format made Algeria unnoticeable!

Teamtalk should give up this stupid game. At least Atlantic had some sort of an audience, even if it wasn't any more a major national competitor on either side of the Irish Sea.

The dance music format was also a bit stupid - as dance music only really sounds good with FM quality. Just bring back the hit pop and rock music, and get some listeners back!

[Mike]

Incidently RE: 252 what about moving RTE's Beaumount stuff out there ?

252 on full power could be heard on telephones in Swords and even on mic amplifiers in Mayo

Finland also have a 1500Kw allocation on 252 and onetime had plans to use it for their International service but AFIK gave up on it when Atlantic came along. Even RTA (Algerian French language service) never bothered with Full power until A252 came on

[Guest]

Incidently RE: 252 what about moving RTE's Beaumount stuff out there ?

If RTE 2FM's Mediumwave site in Dublin was closed down completely I doubt it would be missed. Anyway the 612 signal is not all that bad in Dublin if people want to be able to listen to 2FM there on MW
The Dublin area is flat so I doubt there are any FM blackspots unlike certain other areas of the country

[trev]

Where exactly is the 1278kHz tx in Dublin? It was coming in loud and clear in Mayo last night.

[Mike]

Its in the Whitehall/Beaumount area of Dublin
near the collins Avenue/Swords Road (N1) junction if I remember rightly

Originally it was located in the Phoenix park. They also have a TX in Cork on the same freq

[021]

The 1278kHz TX in Cork used to be 10kW but it is on a lower power nowadays. Also the audio quality on it used be a hell of a lot better than it is now.

BTW Mike, how long ago was it that the Medium Wave transmitter in Dublin was located in the Phoenix park??

[Megawatts]

Anyone heard anything about the 3,000,000 LW from Holland... using phased towers?

Music Mann from the Isle Of Mann?

I understand there are plans to make AM stations Digital, and so get better audio bandwidth, or is that a pipe dream from the US.

[Hissing Sidebands]

no, It's happening ok - see
http://www.rnw.nl/realradio/html/drm.html

and www.drm.org

[Megawatts]

They use two 300KW rated rigs, at 250KW typical, which probably means they COULD push about 1,000KW if they really really really wanted to.(as a 300KW uses 500KW tube, or valve)

[Mike]

The move to Beaumount was in the late 70's early 80's AFIK

Incidently its not common for AM stations to run on less than full power for technical, financial or even radiological (concern about electromagnetic fields) reasons.

Many Stations have a system wherby two transmitters running at half power are phased together so that if one is down for maintenance the other can keep running

[Justin Speck]

I presume you intended to write that it is not UNcommon for AM stations to run less than full power. If so I would agree with you.

BTW, when thinking about AM powers don't forget the inefficiency of antennas at those frequencies. You can get gain from directional arrays but usually you only get loss from your single radiator. As an example, a quarter wave monopole might be about 75% efficient so your 10kW tx would only produce 7.5kW emrp.

J

[Mike]

Yeah Justin thanks for pointing out my lack of keyboard skills

Very few AM stations in Europe bother with directional aerials for some reason (In America theyre widely used) Sweden's 1179, Germanys 153 and the proposed Dutch Service on 171 are the few exceptons.

Incidently Ive never understood why the Russians never thought of putting a directional antenna and 1500 Kilowatt transmitter in Cuba during the Cold war. On 530KHz it would have covered most of N America.

[Tabasco]

London's Capital Gold on 1548 kHz uses a directional array from Brookmans Park (actually it's not Brookmans Park, but close to it), with 27.5kW emrp. It's a 4-tower array I think. Done to protect the 1548 allocation in Birmingham.

There are actually many more directional AMs that you'd think; One I worked on is at Bow in London, carrying Premier Radio. 150 foot tower with a tuned sloping reflector.

rgds