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IIRC, their operation relies on enormous vacuum tubes that the BBC can’t get replacements for any more.
by cjs_ac 3mo ago
IIRC, their operation relies on enormous vacuum tubes that the BBC can’t get replacements for any more.
- RachelF 3mo agoIn some way it is short-sited, as radio is a good backup medium for global communications in case the entire Internet ever goes down. Vacuum tubes also aren't vulnerable to nuclear weapon electro-magnetic pulses. However, other than ham radio enthusiasts I guess no one listens to analogue radio anymore.
- jasonjayr 3mo agoI got my RTL-SDR to see what I could listen to, and by the time I tuned in, nearly all the short wave stations I could tune to were just broadcasting evangelical religious stuff, or other crazy conspiracy stuff. It's remarkable that these powerful stations spend most of their broadcast day transmitting that content.
- a57721 3mo agoMost international broadcasters have left the shortwave band quite some time ago, unfortunately. I think it is still easy to find BBC, China Radio International, Romanian radio, Radio Havana Cuba, but the list is relatively short (compared to 20 years ago). In the US, WRMI sells its air time to anyone at low prices. It's mostly religious stuff but there are some regular music shows too, I think.
- pessimizer 3mo agoThey still broadcast on FM.
- dingaling 3mo ago... on a patchwork off different frequencies across the UK due to the poor propagation of VHF
- fredoralive 3mo agoDoesn’t RDS mostly solve that for the most common case where frequency changes becomes an issue (car radios).
- phire 3mo agoThis transmitter doesn't really have the range for reliable global communication, it's optimised for covering the UK. For the global communication usecase, there are other networks of military transmitters (DHFCS) that are much better suited for the job, and they aren't being shut down any time soon. What it did provide was a simple but reliable way to maintain emergency broadcast to general public within Britain. And it probably should have been kept online just for that reason.
- microgpt 3mo agoExcept nobody has a radio any more, certainly not one that receives LF. People have cellphones, and cellphones have a mandatory feature that lets the government display a message on everyone's screen, usually accompanied by loud and scary beeping. That's the new emergency broadcast mechanism. It's not as simple, but at least people actually see it.
- hdgvhicv 3mo agoVery few radios can pick up long wave now. My car certainly won’t. Even when they can most people Wouldn’t have a clue to listen to it. There’s a reason LW isn’t critical national infrastructure.
- gerdesj 3mo agoWe do spend out quite a lot here in the UK for the BBC. They could easily dump a couple of expensive presenters and use the savings for vacuum tubes, if that is what is needed. No idea where vacuum tubes were invented but I'm sure the BBC could find someone to make them.
- andyjohnson0 3mo ago> No idea where vacuum tubes were invented but I'm sure the BBC could find someone to make them. The BBC has just cut its budget by £500 million, in an apparent attempt to limit the damage from the latest charter renewal process - which determines its funding. The new director general (ie ceo) is an ex-Google person, and they seem to be pivoting to become a social media content provider. So I'm pretty sure that spending licence fee money on making vacuum tubes to broadcast a signal that nobody under forty listens to wouldnt get past a value for money test. (I like the BBC and its radio output, and I'm one of those weirdos who still pays the licence fee despite never watching tv or any of the stuff that the licence fee is required for. But it is becoming increasingly lost to me: focussed on triviality and politically cowed. Sadly, I no longer expect it to last.)
- microgpt 3mo agoI thought the license fee was a tax. You have to pay it, except in extremely specific scenarios that are basically just the bureaucracy's way of saying it's technically optional even though it isn't. AFAIK you have to own no devices capable of receiving BBC broadcasts - this includes most phones and computers since they broadcast on the internet.
- jstanley 3mo agoIt's hard to believe that civilisation has lost the ability to build longwave radio transmitters.
- microgpt 3mo agoIt's like the moon rocket. At any time we could have restarted that program from scratch and run it again, but what would the point be? We don't have the direct ability to make one but we have the ability to gain the ability to make one. If we did regain the capability it would probably be solid-state.
- jstanley 3mo agoI don't think it's like that at all. I bet you could build a perfectly serviceable replacement at home without needing to spin up any special manufacturing equipment, using off-the-shelf components. For that matter I'd be somewhat surprised if you can't simply buy a ready-made replacement.
- microgpt 3mo agoA 500kW LF amplifier? Things do have to be designed to their individual requirements, you can't just buy a car stereo amp and turn it up to 1000.
- jstanley 3mo agoMaybe something like https://www.nautel.com/products/am-transmitters/nx-series/ https://www.nautel.com/products/am-transmitters/nx-series/ ?
- wartywhoa23 3mo agoThanks for sharing this, it surely blows the theory about the lost art of building powerful transmitters out of the water.
- rgblambda 3mo agoIt's actually a private company that operates the transmitters. The BBC have been paying for access until now.