{"id":3684,"date":"2019-05-27T00:20:55","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T00:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/?p=3684"},"modified":"2019-05-27T09:38:30","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T09:38:30","slug":"in-rural-wales-you-still-need-an-am-radio-until-the-last-tube-fails-in-service-at-droitwich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/in-rural-wales-you-still-need-an-am-radio-until-the-last-tube-fails-in-service-at-droitwich\/","title":{"rendered":"In rural Wales you still need an AM radio, until the last tube fails in service at Droitwich"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We used to match the medium to the message and the terrain, but now we seem to assume mobile data is everywhere. AM radio is dying, because everybody is online. Except when they aren’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bwlch Y Groes<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I recently went hillwalking in Wales, and it’s handy to have the weather forecast, and FM doesn’t really happen in remote Wales. I was lucky enough to still have Radio 4 Longwave reception on 198kHz, but I was surprised at how quickly FM became useless in Wales. RDS doesn’t really help because the problem is there is no alternative signal to switch to in a lot of Snowdonia. There’s no useful mobile signal in a lot of mid-Wales either – I have a dual-SIM dumb mobile (which ahs better RF performance than a smartphone), on the O2 and Virgin networks for diversity of networks, and that doesn’t get anything in large parts of the hills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Bwlch Y Groes is apparently the Pass of the Cross, a pilgrim route to St Davids from the north. There is indeed a cross<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

and there’s sod all FM or mobile signal between Lake Bala and Lake Vrynwy, indeed none where I stayed at Lake Vrynwy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lake Vrynwy. Nice to know the weather if you’re going to take on those hills<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There is a article in the Guardian<\/a> that the 198kHz transmitter uses some ancient tubes 1m high, and the BBC have the last 10 in the world. When they are down to the last two and one fails in service then presumably rural Wales will lose its weather forecasts along with people using the shipping forecast at sea. People in houses will be OK because they can use satellite, or t’internet, presumably larger boats have something from the 21st century. But walkers and those in cars will be stuffed. The BFI has a lovely little film<\/a> from the 1930s about the construction of Droitwich<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The 1930s valves<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It seems a little bit sad, however, to read that we have lost the engineering capacity we had in 1984 when the current transmitter was installed, to wit:<\/p>\n\n\n

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So antique is the transmission equipment that the BBC does not believe it is possible to manufacture new valves because slightly faulty replacements could cause a catastrophic failure of the other parts of the transmitter. Whenever the valves fail a dangerous “arc of power” surges through the 700ft Droitwich transmission masts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Seems a bit rough that we can’t manufacture a clone of the CAT27 valves [Source ex-bbc.net<\/a> retired engineers] (PDF datasheet<\/a>) they used any more, the Force is no longer with us it seems<\/p>\n

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CAT27 transmitter tube, made by Marconi in 1984<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

My car radio is nothing special and I did wonder if it was worth buying a decent AM\/shortwave radio. It’s nice to have when camping in the wilds. It seems that wouldn’t be worth it, there is no appetite for long distance radio any more – the website of Digital Radio Mondiale<\/a> is a museum of tumbleweed, and DRM is not really used in Europe, though the BBC do transmit the World service on DRM. Everybody in Europe is online, it appears. Coincidentally I have a good workaround, I have since discovered my amateur radio FT897 transceiver will tune down to 198kHz and received Radio 4 fine on a wire aerial even in ADSL and computer noise hell, so it will do fine in the sticks. Until that penultimate tube blows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FM is tough in Wales, descending into hiss and crap as you leave the coast and major towns, and DAB is absolutely foul as you lose signal, disappearing into loud chirps and bleeps. That’s what was nice about AM – as you lost the signal it got noisier and then fainter. I wonder how long it will still be around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More widely, market forces drive innovation forward but they also drive resilience out, concentrating things towards using the Internet for information delivery. I do wonder how well we would recover from a modern-day Carrington event<\/a>, needing to black start a damaged Internet with a lot of satellite communications fried and limited power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We used to match the medium to the message and the terrain, but now we seem to assume mobile data is everywhere. AM radio is dying, because everybody is online. Except when they aren’t. I recently went hillwalking in Wales, and it’s handy to have the weather forecast, and FM doesn’t really happen in remote … Continue reading “In rural Wales you still need an AM radio, until the last tube fails in service at Droitwich”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5aOO7-Xq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3684"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3696,"href":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions\/3696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.richardmudhar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}