Comments by "Bond25" (@Bond2025) on "I Found This Transmitter In The STRANGEST Place! - Wallasey" video.

  1. A real shame as most DABradio station audio quality is worse than AM, and a lot is in mono anyway.
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  2. Well, there is a reason "AM" is used on aircraft frequencies and why it was used extensively by police radios fitted to cars, fire engine radios, also a lot of PMR from the 1970s and 1980s... Now it is just aircraft using it. In the late 80s I used to have a Uniden 2830 in my car and used that on USB mobile with friends on CB frequencies! AM was far better than FM when driving around. It just seemed to be clearer and louder.
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  3. That's what I was thinking of, I called it an aircraft locator! I keep meaning to go and have a look at that when I am over there next.
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  4. It's to stop the locals breaking in and either pinching stuff or causing damage or worse to themselves. A few of the MW pirates probably thought about hooking up a TX to that tower. The Medium Wave and Short Wave pirate scene is still fairly big in the UK of you know when and where to listen. With bigger stations vanishing, it leaves the bands available.
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  5. It is a thick tar like substance that sticks to skin and clothing and is extremely difficult to get off. It puts people off climbing on or near it.
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  6. It sounds better than DABradio. The problem is often to do with sound compression and overdriven clipping audio in the fight between stations to sound the loudest. Sadly, DAB stations are doing this now and with very low MONO bitrates, it sounds absolutely rubbish.
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  7. You would have to look at the efficiency of the transmitter, modulator and amplifier, then any additional equipment in use. I would guess that site has a 3phase 415v supply and a 1.5KW AM TX and all the equipment probably takes 4 times that. How about 7KW ? It would be like leaving a shower on all day!!! Expensive. Over £100 a day.
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  8. There were experiments with AM Stereo around 30 years ago, nothing ever developed, but it did sound quite good!
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  9. AM is a mode of modulating a carrier...just like FM or SSB, CW, Data etc. AM is not the frequency or band. You can have a 1458KHZ FM or SSB transmitter.
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  10. We already have that, 4G and 5G which is far cheaper than setting up a company to manage a service and equipment plus licences. Mobile phone companies are already offering widespread WiFi from phone masts now. It would have been a great idea to try 20 years ago, but there isn't a demand now unless you live in some remote area and want to set up a 4G/5G to WiFi repeater, in which case you could just set up a phone repeater and get a better service without any licence problems.
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  11. AM is a mode of modulating a carrier. It is the frequency that gives good coverage and the required properties.
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  12. You should have gone down the M53 to Clatterbridge Hospital. They have a very small licenced 1602KHz AM hospital radio transmitter. It's a box in the car park and a small loaded pole antenna of about 30ft on a post! It does the job across the site and sound quality is really good. It was at the car park were the injections were being given a few years ago...can't remember the name of the building itself.
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  13. It would be for the people living near that getting blasted with 1500Watts of RF day and night. There is no way it wouldn't affect their health.
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  14. You could certainly apply for licences and put different radio services up like PMR, digital community repeater services, phone relays, point to point microwave services etc. I still can't believe no one living by that mast suffered any health issues as a result of living next to high levels of RF. Even working near a TX or mast, you are only allowed to when power levels are dropped right down and it's only for a set time in each hour of a day for example. Imagine sitting in your house or garden getting 1500Watts minimum transmitted at you all day and night. When there were multiple stations the risk would have been far greater.
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  15. Very true, you could use a few simple components. A coil around a ferrite road, tuning capacitor (not even always needed), a diode, capacitor and crystal earpiece hooked up to a long wire and earth. I bet a lot of the locals had tuned circuits rigged up to get a bit of free power!!! Inductively couple free power.
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  16. I can't imagine the sort of health issues from living within 50ft of a 1.5KW minimum AM TX. Did anyone ever have any issues! What about the interference from them ? I bet you could hear the stations on everything.
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  17. It's near the dual carriageway that goes past wallasey village station, nearer moreton.
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  18. You will hate the poor quality of DABradio then, it's revolting. I remember years ago getting my first DABradio home and thinking it was going to be brilliant after watching all the TV adverts. What a disappointment to find stations in MONO at 32 and 64Kbps. Some were 192Kbps and a dance station was 128Kbps, but the more that appeared, the more the quality was ruined. Now DAB is in a right state. It is the same adverts being played on every station, but with a few different tunes and jingles for different station names. No one listens to DAB. Even in my cars since 2012 having DABradio is nothing special, it has ALWAYS sounded rubbish, with one exception of KISS FM until that got a lower quality and is now worse than AM radio. It should have been put between 68-88MHz too, a very unused band, but with a really good coverage, especially mobile, compared to up around 200MHz. Badly thought out, terrible audio quality and do you remember that stupid advertising company that did radio and car adverts aimed at "old" people? They put a nice new modern radio in an old case to try and appeal to pensioners, or people with certain conditions that only remembered older style radios, then tried similar with cars - completely bizarre. DAB is a waste of time, I would prefer AM radio quality in the car.
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  19. The RADAR isn't used now, I remember always seeing that rotating many years ago when I went past. I just didn't know who was seeing the feed from it. Some coastguard aerials used to be on the Liverpool Cathedral together with the aerial farm for PMR, Taxis, utility companies and the current JUICE FM or whatever it is called now on 107.6MHz. There is a transmitter room up there too which is interesting if you get a look inside. It tends to be locked up more now after a Liverpool Solicitor was said to have hidden until after closing time and jumped off the roof. That story was in the national and local press too. Some say it was because of who he was mixed up with and it might not have been what it appeared to be. If you are in Liverpool, go for a tower tour of the cathedral and have a look at the aerials! Take your Meshtastic nodes up there.
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  20. You mean MEDIUM WAVE, AM is a mode of modulating the carrier, just like FM or SSB.
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  21. Yes it can! You can have AM Stereo quite easily, full separation between channels. It was tried and didn't take off as no one saw the need when we had FM Stereo transmitters. The radios would have been more expensive and no one would pay for them. Full tests were carried out. It sounded good too.
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  22. There is no way I would like to have lived that close to a MW transmitter at those sort of power levels. If you had gone a mile or two to Moreton before Wallasey Village train station, you could have had a look at the aircraft locator antenna which looks like a huge doughnut with lots of small aerials. That's always an interesting one.
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  23. I did when it first started as Talk Radio, Ian Collins was a presenter that went on at night when all that rubbish sport stopped. He did a phone in and chat show and started around 2am to 6am. He built up an amazing listenership and it was really good in those days. Remember that annoying jingle "Talk Radio - write it down" and "Otex ear Drops", then "nod32"...
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