Phoenix fm Halifax maybe in trouble

[radionortheast]

the fm has been silent for numerous weeks, on 96.7, if i turn it up audio is there but really low in the backround, appears shows are been promoted on facebook/x. I can’t look without an account, sounds like it is in some kind of difficulty, i’ve known it go silent for a few days but not this long.
the original crowdfunder is below

https://www.phoenixfm.co.uk/2020/09/10/ ... owdfunder/

the grants have special condition does sound as though it can effect who can go on air, maybe the type of radio station too, it is difficult, the original crowdfunder was set up 2020, they need 10,000 now. sad does seem like this is something were people who couldn't normally get on air could do.

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding ... riestley-4

theres more techical detail about it here, were the transmitter is based don’t know if its hard to get too, likely a cost i guess to having it there, it is shared with tv beacon hill likely difficult to get to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Radio

[Frequent Lee]

I was approached about 6 months ago from an associate who has some occasional programming input via the elderly nursing home that he runs with his parents, some kind of music requests format for the old folk living in the nursing home to help with their dementia and so on.

The stations management has asked him if he knew anybody who could volunteer some time as a station tech for help with engineering equipment & sorting audio feeds feeding the uhf link which I believe is a Band 3 or 4 link through vertically polarised Tx/Rx yagi logs.

I couldn't help them at the time unfortunately but it seems like their still in trouble.

The problem with a lot of these 1st and 2nd gen community stations from the late 90s is they have zero idea about things like breakaway or stereo tool etc and usually it's a direct audio from their console into a one size fits all plug and play SBS broadcast or BW 50 watt one box wonder, never had firmware updates or the default settings altered.

It would probably be a couple of hours work I guess to just chuck a cheap miniature Dell or Compaq Desktop pc doing the necessary things audio software wise or even a Raspberry Pi 5 set up to to then send it over their link encoded and a rx computer at other end to decode the mpx you can then feed into the main TXs mpx input.

Last time I heard it myself was ages ago and I think it was mono and flat audio of varying levels.

BCB in Bradford also has similar problems with the consistency of their FM output audio too, their signal is pretty good considering the restriction on their wattage and with decent quality audio sorting out I think both stations would get them more attractive to prospective djs and local businesses willing to do sponsorship and so on.

We all know what the calibre of the majority of these Ofcom community stations are essentially glorified hospital radio outfits with extremely niche subject matter programming for a handful of an audience.

Sad state of affairs.

[radionortheast]

Bcb is a better signal, don’t know if they could do with a better aerial at Phoenix fm

There is quite a learning curve with stereo tool, I can understand that, they only need processing would make it easier, would sound so much better if it was stereo bcb too, easy for someone who knew how.
When stereo tool first came along I could only get the stereo light to come on no separation. I managed to get it to work some files in winamp, a year or two ago, I suppose usually its done where the laptop picks up the stream, seems to be to do with internal routing, when its working its tend not to stop working. If someone was trying to use it as a traditional stereo encoder, using anologue phono inputs they might encounter problems, thats not the way as cher would say. Better not to reinvent the wheel, to learn how to do it the new way.

If technical standards could be improved that might go some way, make them more attractive, its not that they don’t care, I did think that when I heard alot of these blank carriers, technical problems that never get fixed, they don’t know how.

[FMEnjoyer]

No audio at all sounds like tech trouble or they just closed up and left the rig on till a tech can switch off for them at the site, basically banckrupt and finished ?

Maybe volunteers give up as well, DJ's presenters wonder what the point is after a few weeks when no one is listening. I suspect some stations are just not worth listening to. I have gone off one local to me, a few people clearly left as new djs took over and the music not my taste and I do not like the presenters. So I listen to better ones that I found now.

Not many pirates on so these sort of stations fill that gap, with almost normal people presenting on them, rather than pretend happy shouting people with false over the top enthusiasm like commercial stations.

[radionortheast]

Theres lots of old recordings on the pirate archive 1991 even earlier, with full stereo, they had uhf links, they seemed to know a lot more how to do it, I suppose they were deemed as not fit and proper persons to hold broadcast licences, does seem bonkers, they seemed to know what they were doing. They’ve all gone away anyway, likely its more about ticking boxes and filling forms in, nooone techical there to keep it all going. With no pirates around they are the closet that we have to pirates, dly put together, can be a good thing, I think its only the ones that sound like commercial stations which will survive, to be fair they do have a greater choice of music than bauer, but theres nothing in community radio to get excited over. Weather localness can survive online, when it couldn't through fm i'm not sure about

[Albert H]

The "Community" stations were deliberately designed to fail. OFCOM wanted it that way. The rules about advertising and revenues, the ridiculous operating costs, the insane licencing ruules, and the stupid power limitations all conspired to make sure that they can never work.

OFCOM claimed that "Community Commercial Radio" couldn't ever work, and then deliberately set out to make certain that it failed.

The "Government" always want tight control of broadcast media, which is why pirate broadcasting scares them rigid. That's why they piut so much time and money (and deliberate disinformation about "interference") into their effort to shut everything down.

You're right about those of us back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s - we knew what we were doing. We developed all sorts of cunning ways of avoiding the "authorities", including clever methods of linking, concealed transmitting gear, stealth aerials, and more. Unfortunately, a lot of DJs are loud-mouthed idiots, and almost invariably gave the game away, leading to raids.......

[FMEnjoyer]

Theres lots of old recordings on the pirate archive 1991 even earlier, with full stereo, they had uhf links, they seemed to know a lot more how to do it, I suppose they were deemed as not fit and proper persons to hold broadcast licences, does seem bonkers, they seemed to know what they were doing. They’ve all gone away anyway, likely its more about ticking boxes and filling forms in, nooone techical there to keep it all going. With no pirates around they are the closet that we have to pirates, dly put together, can be a good thing, I think its only the ones that sound like commercial stations which will survive, to be fair they do have a greater choice of music than bauer, but theres nothing in community radio to get excited over. Weather localness can survive online, when it couldn't through fm i'm not sure about

I do wonder though. id did a little station 15W. never measured the spurious or harmonics ever. I was just amazed
it stayed on frequency despite being VFO and did not hum. Arguably I did not know what I was doing, looking at the rigs from back then they looks a big meager with the coils on the PA's so I have no idea if the rigs I had were any good or not, I say with a degree of shame.

Many people putting a rig on a block have little technical knowledge they know how to screw a PL-259 into the box and stick a single pre cut to freq dipole up at sun set time. Big stations probably had an installation tech and money to pay them.
When we ask about knowing what they are doing, not sprogging is the most important part of that as is repeated multiple times on this forum.
Was anyone testing their rigs competently other than Albert and maybe a few big techs that were well looked after financially with multiple rig orders a month ? Or did they hand over the readies for an ali box with a heatsink and stick it up a block come what may ? I bet 80pct on air had zero idea what the rigs were doing.
It's a good question I think. One that could be hard to answer unless old necks come up and say yes we ensured every rig we wired up was 100pct clean on a spectrum analyzer.

Maybe there was a mass of interference from the 100 or so London stations on FM back then at the peak. Or maybe not. I can certainly recall multiple stations being heard on a few frequencies off an on so not all equipment was squeaky clean.
Clearly they were not using PLL commercial £5,000.00-£10,000 commercially calibrated 100-200W rigs.

It seems a little bit naive to think every pirate that came on had top quality, totally clean rigs. Some of the things I have seen installed looked like you would die touching them.

[radionortheast]

Interesting point, I difinately know of transmitters that went wrong, I suspect there might not of been able to get to them, risk of been caught with them, it has be tested were it was going to be set up suppose conditions are not forced to be the same, they didn’t have an invisiblity cloak so couldn’t be there.
Coupling of the different stages could be a problem, over driving the output devices, suppose their reliant on it not going berserk if theres different loading conditions, potential interactions between other rf sources on the block, phone mast. You might be right, they probably were just there to plug it in, I did see a video not so long ago were someone seemed to be doing that, they said put transmitters together, seemed more like they knew how to make an aerial to plug in the transmitter.
A number of pirates I heard after 2000, seemed to be too loud, don’t know if they were listening to it nearby or couldn’t get up there. Part of of might of been recievers were quite narrow then, had to be because of how congested the fm band became, bass frequencies something they would struggle to reproduce. I always used to drop the bass frequencies down using 2 1uf capacitors when pcs equipment came along, make it sound nice far away.

I do wonder though. id did a little station 15W. never measured the spurious or harmonics ever. I was just amazed
it stayed on frequency despite being VFO and did not hum. Arguably I did not know what I was doing, looking at the rigs from back then they looks a big meager with the coils on the PA's so I have no idea if the rigs I had were any good or not, I say with a degree of shame.

if you have different stages, makes a transmitter more stable, so your oscilator is separate from your rf amplifier, if you went to connect the aerial directly to the oscilator it would change the frequency alot, you have to have buffer stages. I had a veronica 1w, it was very stable, only drift khz, before it i had a one transitor transmitter, go to connect an aerial to that and the frequency would change, I didn’t know how to make anything else, the circuit was from a magazine. Afew years before it I had an fm bug that had 3 different stages, it was very stable, only 0.2w, I adapted it so I could a 3.5mm jack so I could play music through it.
I soldered the 1w stereo together from veronica, it was amazing that it worked, spend all day soldering it, by 5 pm it came on air, my parents told me music was coming across the tv, turned out the power supply wasn’t powerful enough, voltage was dropping wouldn’t of known, better power supply was got which fixed it, there wasn’t anything around then to test it, checking over radio tv, scanner. I’ve never known anything like it, went from having something very unstable would drift 200khz, to having something very stable over night in stereo sounded so professional. That was a none pll kit, it stayed bang on frequency, veronica gets a bad rap now, I think it was taken over moved to other country, there are no kits available from the uk, it might not of been a pll, it was in some ways far superior the these all in one chips you get now. Albert and others know more about what went on with veronica, know more about the high power stuff that went onto tower blocks, I only ever dealth with a few watts.