Select bid for community licence

[zoostorm]

Select is one of five stations who are bidding for a legal licence in Croydon.

https://radiotoday.co.uk/2019/04/35-mor ... -received/

[famefm]

I have noticed 99.3 is off in the old days stations switch off pirate operations when they apply but not the recent ones until they won

[dancemusicdj]

Best of luck to them.

[biggiedan]

Their still rolling on 993 famefm. But yea, best of luck to them.

[famefm]

I can hear it it wasn't on a few days ago

[thewoodstarr]

Good luck to them, RSL licenses have come down to an affordable level for most operators, there is just not enough frequencies on the dial.

[McDonalds]

Hopefully they can make it more easy to come on to DAB+

[Albert H]

The wankers at OFCOM think that 64k mono is enough for a "Community" station. They sound appallingly bad - heavily over-compressed and with that nasty digital "granularity" distortion. They're are a complete waste of time.

It's interesting to note that it's not too difficult to build a DAB transmitter these days. Encoding is trivial (I use a Raspberry Pi with a ADC card per stereo channel and an old desktop PC for the multiplexing) and the transmission can be based around one of the SDR transmitter boards that are quite cheaply available these days. I use a Hack RF One, since that's what I've got on the bench. The hardest part of the job is constructing a truly linear, 6MHz wide power amplifier.

Where I live (part of the time) only three of the possible six multiplexes ("bouquets") are used, so adding another one is easy. You're buggered in London (and many other cities) since all six possible bouquets are used, though I some suburban areas there's only five.

DAB is an attempt by the government to take full control of what can be broadcast. The notion of true "free speech" radio scares the hell out of them. The truth about "Climate Change" (a political construct with no basis in scientific reality), about "Green Energy" (there's no such thing - the bird mincers and solar panels are entirely useless), and other current political footballs won't ever come out in the mainstream broadcast media, which is why we owe it to ourselves, our families and communities to broadcast the truth.

It's all very well playing records to your pals, but REAL pirate radio is about much more than that. It's about explaining the realities of the world around us in an honest way - in ways that you won't hear on the BBC or any of the other "approved" broadcasters!

[wazza]

oh for fucks sake, he's a climate change denier as well...

[drumandbasshead010]

The wankers at OFCOM think that 64k mono is enough for a "Community" station. They sound appallingly bad - heavily over-compressed and with that nasty digital "granularity" distortion. They're are a complete waste of time.

It's interesting to note that it's not too difficult to build a DAB transmitter these days. Encoding is trivial (I use a Raspberry Pi with a ADC card per stereo channel and an old desktop PC for the multiplexing) and the transmission can be based around one of the SDR transmitter boards that are quite cheaply available these days. I use a Hack RF One, since that's what I've got on the bench. The hardest part of the job is constructing a truly linear, 6MHz wide power amplifier.

Where I live (part of the time) only three of the possible six multiplexes ("bouquets") are used, so adding another one is easy. You're buggered in London (and many other cities) since all six possible bouquets are used, though I some suburban areas there's only five.

DAB is an attempt by the government to take full control of what can be broadcast. The notion of true "free speech" radio scares the hell out of them. The truth about "Climate Change" (a political construct with no basis in scientific reality), about "Green Energy" (there's no such thing - the bird mincers and solar panels are entirely useless), and other current political footballs won't ever come out in the mainstream broadcast media, which is why we owe it to ourselves, our families and communities to broadcast the truth.

It's all very well playing records to your pals, but REAL pirate radio is about much more than that. It's about explaining the realities of the world around us in an honest way - in ways that you won't hear on the BBC or any of the other "approved" broadcasters!

Sorry, I appreciate that evidence would suggest you've done everything, been everywhere and know your stuff, but who's to say what 'real pirate radio' is? For whatever reason you're anti-rave sceen, but it doesn't mean that all pirates are. Pirate radio has shaped sceens through 'playing records' that might not have survived without it. Consider that.

[Albert H]

I'm not concerned about the "Rave Scene" - that's largely dead in the UK and much of northern Europe. However, there's a bit of a live music scene starting up again (after the disasters of the changes to the licencing rules), and it's becoming possible to find venues with real music, well played again.

I agree that pirate radio is a way for otherwise unheard artistes to get their music to an audience - it's always been one of the primary reasons for its existence.

However - if you want to be a successful broadcaster, there's little point in playing endless beats and drones like that effort on 106.5 did - it's incredibly dull, and once the novelty has worn off - after about 10 minutes - you'll tune away to listen to something with a bit of variety!

Today's UK pirates are (mostly) awful. Perhaps some of us old 'uns should come out of retirement and show the kids how it's done....!

[Effemm]

Totally agree Mr H. The “yout” seem to only think pirate radio is for Dance heads. How bloody wrong they are

& god forbid if their soldering is as bad as their spelling !!!

Every pirate in the Capitals ‘best’ years had variety, a real mix of all different shows, even Soca got aired 🥳... today’s mob like you say have no talent at all, same old same old & I bet collecting subs of the majority is a case of wait until my paycheque arrives ffs

[Casual]

The “yout” seem to only think pirate radio is for Dance heads.

The irony here is the type of stations you mention with "youts" playing Dance music are run by men in their 40's with a lot of their DJ's also well into their 30's as well as older as well as some younger ones (anyone who has played on/had involvement with a Dance pirate recently will back that up) - Kids to the likes of you dinosaurs maybe, but I'd hardly describe that age range as young.

The dinosaur remark is in pure jest by the way!

[Lordunderground]

It all started going wrong with the UKG thing in the 90s. Gave rise the people do nothing image of radio. I saw recently one so called pioneer of this chavy genre posted 10 fav classic tracks on facebook....... & guess what, not one UKG track was in the selection, "pretending" to be a House jock.

[nrglcb2016]

Why is everybody so down on the uk g scene , for me it was a fresh injection for the airwaves . Yes there was some crap stations but there also was some bloody good ones too. Providing the dj plays proper uk g and not a pure garage playlist then u got me bopping and yes i am nearly 40 years old aswell

[zoostorm]

I wasn't a big fan of the UKG only stations, although Upfront were the best of the bunch, along with Delight (the So Solid station).

However the late 90s/early 00s started bringing more diverse dance stations, Soundz being an example of a station that also played DnB, Hardcore, House as well as UKG

[drumandbasshead010]

Why is everybody so down on the uk g scene , for me it was a fresh injection for the airwaves . Yes there was some crap stations but there also was some bloody good ones too. Providing the dj plays proper uk g and not a pure garage playlist then u got me bopping and yes i am nearly 40 years old aswell

Unfortunately quite a few on this forum seem to be against the rave scene, so you're going to get people like that. Long live rave music

[Albert H]

OK.

Soundz was actually pretty good while it lasted. They played a diverse range of material, and were not afraid to try something a bit different.

Upfront was always unlistenable - they had no real idea. Delight almost got it right, but were too narrow in their choice of material....

[pure94]

Albert honestly how can you say upfront was unlisenable...it was quality...always on if they want taken off within 2hours it was back on and they always sounded crisp....

[Albert H]

The material that Upfront played appealed to a very narrow audience. Other stations were more diverse so had worthwhile listenerships.