100's of small loft, garden, shed random 1 hour stations ?

[Matt]

There may well be an audience in places for specialist music radio on FM but analogue share of listening has fallen from 32.4% to 27% in just one Year from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024. That's quite a sharp fall. Digital is now 73%. I love traditional broadcasting, but it's on its way out.

Anecdotally, I don't know anyone who uses a traditional radio and the kids don't know how to use one. They weren't have a clue how to find Radio 1 or any of the big commercials on a traditional set. And why would they? They can just ask Google or Alexa for their content.

As I say, I love FM, AM, SW, the lot. But it's an actual interest for me not just a way of accessing entertainment. I tune around almost everyday but I don't talk about it to friends or colleagues. Why would I? They'd probably think it was a bit of a strange thing to do. They just want to hear a station they like and they access it through the technology of the day.

Source of the data: https://www.rajar.co.uk/docs/2024_03/Al ... 202024.pdf

[EFR]

Im happy that they didnt continue here with DAB.

[oldtech]

All of the commercial Borg (Bauer & Global) are dire, not sure about other parts of the country but for FM in London Radio Jackie is the only station worth listening to. DAB+ is useful for Radio Caroline, but the stream would be good enough. Those stations are fine if I want a bit of chatter, otherwise Spotify, Soundcloud or other streaming services are better, playing music I actually enjoy, and with Discover or Station feeds for new music. I used to broadcast in the 70's, now I can't see the point, every format is catered to online

[Albert H]

Online stations worth a listen include:

• SomaFM: https://somafm.com/
• RNI: http://rniradio.net
• RaidersFM: https://www.raidersfm.com

[Alex728]

I get the impression conventional radio (albeit for specialist music, particularly electronic/dance genres) is far from dead - was driving around M25 a couple of months ago - there were roadworks and slow traffic and I discovered my car radio has auto background scan - I was able to monitor a good number of pirate FM stations (about 5 or 6), a few legal community broadcasters and the ex-pirates on DAB+

Maybe not as much as 90s or 00s but more than I'd expected to hear!

As for multiple small stations, the issue there is its still quite a bit of work and skills required (including sourcing obsolete components) to build a decent PLL rig, and hobby electronics has changed a lot with much more use of ready built modules and unfortunately a lot of skills seems to have been lost..

[Albert H]

Alex - you can be sure that there are quite a lot of people wjo still have the skills required to build transmitters!

Also, it's quite possible to use current components - the PLL ICs that were designed for TV Tuners are widely available and don't cost much. They are easily programmed with PICs, AVR or Arduino devices. The only "fly in the ointment" is the unavailability of the Toko coils we all used to use. However, there are equivalent parts available if you're prepared to do some searching. Modern design methods allow us to avoid the use of expensive trimmer capacitors.

Nowadays, there are (relatively) high powered, high gain RF FETs available at minimal cost. Back in the 80s, we'd need at least three stages to get from 100 mW up to around 100W (usually with gains of ~10 dB at each stage) and probably 28V supply (which is not convenient for battery power!). Efficiencies were usually of the order of 60% at best, so there was a lot of heat to get rid of too.

Last week, I had a 13.8V 120W transmitter on my workbench. The output stage used a pair of Mitsubishi "12V" FETs, and needed just 250mW of drive for full output! The overall efficiency of the box was about 85%, so it's dissipating (roughly) 25 Watts of heat, which needs a surprisingly small heatsink for fully passive cooling. A quick test showed that the worst harmonic content was the third, and that was down at about -86dBc, and it worsened by at most a whole 1.5dBc across the band! The constructor had included gain-levelling, so the output power stayed the same on all Band II frequencies, and it even included a basic deviation limiter to prevent overmodulation. This unit had a better specification than the vast majority of commercial broadcast transmitters available today, and was constructed by a 17-year-old lad who hadn't ever used a soldering iron until two years ago......

[Alex728]

I'd seen those TV tuner chips but wondered about long term availability (and a lot seem to be sold from China), but maybe there are thousands of good ones still available? TBH I did manage to get 1970s Ge diodes cheap and easy enough (ex MOD stock) to build a 3 component "crystal set" that plugs into a PC soundcard input to receive Radio Caroline which worked..

if I were 17 again today I'd probably be doing the same as that lad, certainly todays test equipment is a lot more affordable and simulator software now free. In 80s me and my friends did the usual experiments in my teens with 1/2 transistor mini rigs, Stentors etc but after high school I got more distracted by the rave scene to go deeper into electronic construction, although its something I am getting back into (having spent the last few decades dealing mostly with computers and ready built stuff)

What I did however notice is on here there were a few people selling PLL rig kits and even ready made boards at affordable prices (about 10 years ago) but this has stopped, not sure if its due to legal concerns or simply issues with finding some parts like the coils you mentioned?

[FMEnjoyer]

I edited this as i did not have the energy to even be bothered to express myself about radio anymore, that in itself speaks volumes.