87.8

[famefm]

Its got messy seems like 2 stations on it IHR +1 other ?

[Albert H]

As the number of available frequencies reduces, you're going to see a whole lot more of this. It'll get like Italy where you have to run huge power to be heard more than a few hundred metres from the site! One Italian "private" station I've been involved with, up a big hill near to a major city runs a 120kW rig with an ERP of 550kW!

[famefm]

I have really noticed the difference over the years when 30 years ago a station broadcasting on 94.5 fm in London could be heard 60 miles away on only 250 watts or less

[Albert H]

The noise floor has risen quite radically with all the digital noise from computers and stupid mains-borne data connections, and all the silly little radio-controlled gizmos that we just can't live without today!. The additional stations on Band ll have also made the world much noisier.

Back in the 80s, nobody ran more than 100 to 200 Watts and could achieve a real city-wide coverage. Capital had an ERP of about 2kW and we didn't have the BBC jammers 300kHz below each of their National stations. In those days we could find space 400kHz away in each direction from anything else. Some stations with especially good sites could cover a significant amount of the home counties too!

Stupid political decisions and the fear of unregulated broadcasts brought us the illegal and ill-thought-out 1985 Communications Act. Successive governments have made the rules ever more draconian and have foisted upon us the bland, mindless crap that keeps the drones stupid and happy. Have you ever bothered to listen to Heart, Capital, Kiss, and all the rest of the mindless pap?

When was the last time you heard ANY station - pirate or legal - say anything outside the political orthodoxy? It's truly sickening and makes me want to get away from Londonistan and its religious Mafia in County Hall. We're being overrun and outbred, and nobody wants to do anything about it.

It's probably game over for the UK. Netherlands here I come, I think!

[famefm]

Are you saying that the 1994 introduction of 888 910 and 932 in London was a deliberate atemp to jam the London airwaves by the BBC to make less space for pirates I can think of one station that didn't last on any other frequency other than 88.75 sunrise fm

[Albert H]

According to the BBC, it was to "improve coverage in the Metropolitan area", but the reality was that they were jammers. They actually cause significant problems in many areas of London, especially where there is particularly good reception of Wrotham - car radios will chop backwards and forwards between the two sources, leaving listeners with intermittent mobile reception. There is absolutely no reason to have these extraneous wastes of bandwidth and energy.

Wrotham's primary lobe is across the capital (as it was designed to be) and the field strength anywhere in London is plenty good enough for their National stations. These damn things at Crystal Palace were just designed to smear more BBC crap across the dial. They even have significantly poorer audio than the proper National rigs at Wrotham.

As the Wise Report in the early 80s explained, there's no reason that the four (or even five or six) National services can't be confined to the lower 5MHz of the band. In the days of insensitive and unselective domestic receivers, there was good reason to space the big rigs widely. These days it's just seen as the BBC's "right" to jam half the band. It's simply political, and none of the parties will do anything about it.

Remember "It doesn't matter who you vote for, the Government always gets in!"

[famefm]

The funny thing is when I drive West to Wiltshire the 93.5 radio 4 will go further than the crystal palace 93.2 which is closer it was definitely not needed by a single listener to have the extra and your right it actually reduced the quality that was there before with the wondering car tuner swapping over with out needing to

[Gigahertz]

Anyone else hearing the computer generated noise on 87.8

Sounds like the old computer game Pong

[famefm]

I'm sure it's a mix of the soul thing and IHR live?

[Albert H]

The funny thing is when I drive West to Wiltshire the 93.5 radio 4 will go further than the crystal palace 93.2

It's not surprising at all. Wrotham (93.5 MHz) is 200kW from a very high site with a beam tilt westward and the "filler" on 93.2 MHz is just 4kW from a significantly lower site, with its predominant lobe going northwards across the London basin.

Back when the 94.9 MHz BBC effort was (just about) worth listening to (Chris Morris was brilliant on GLR) and had moved to Crystal Palace, I can remember listening to it on the car radio pretty much all the way to Bristol. Officially it was 4 kW, but the rather nasty second-hand rig that was installed was actually 10kW at first, when all the spurious crud had been fixed. The transmitter was replaced when Arquiva took over operations, and now it's just the regulation 4kW.

[Nick_G]

I'm getting something on 87.8 this morning. Every so often it peaks noise-free, playing dance music but very very quiet with very low modulation (about 6-7% according to my RBRX Encore FWIW). It peaks in the direction of London.

Is this the same station?

[famefm]

In house radio

[ofcomhater]

Pick these up crystal clear down my ends with scrolling rds

[famefm]

Still get interfrance with RSL s on 877 or 879