BANDSCAN THREAD

StreetLight

Dipole Keith wrote: »

Someone said Club FM 107.1 were on the Freedab in Dublin, I did a scan at Liffey Valley car park today and couldn’t receive any stations on DAB.

FreeDAB is not on the air full time yet. I haven't heard it at all today.

Max Power 2010

StreetLight wrote: »

FreeDAB is not on the air full time yet. I haven't heard it at all today.

What's the coverage like this time?

I recall it was pretty poor on the last outing, improved somewhat before it was raided.

Robdx

I agree much better than HOT
Good imaging on air also
Some great dance classics
Pity you can't pick them up in Dublin
I think it would be a good Dublin Dance station if you could

Sunnyboy11

Robdx wrote: »

I agree much better than HOT
Good imaging on air also
Some great dance classics
Pity you can't pick them up in Dublin
I think it would be a good Dublin Dance station if you could

Self praising again

Antenna

Spirit 549kHz is just a blank carrier ....

KildareP

Antenna wrote: »

Spirit 549kHz is just a blank carrier ....

Their FM in Dublin/Saggart were on blank carriers for most of Friday afternoon onwards.

Losty Dublin

KildareP wrote: »

Their FM in Dublin/Saggart were on blank carriers for most of Friday afternoon onwards.

They were blank for much of Saturday up the north east.

Incidentally I didn't hear Storm NE either.

JDxtra

Mr. MooYagi wrote: »

Happy Saturday! Sun is shining! Anything happening out there today fellas?

I think the answer from now on will generally be "very little".

Broadcast radio has been in decline for the last few years.

Younger generations just aren't interested in it. It simply can't compete against the choice and freshness offered by smartphones, mobile data and streaming services coupled with Bluetooth / Apple Car Play / Android Auto. They are not going to interact with a station for “shout outs”. They have endless other options to communicate online to an audience.

Even my parents don’t listen to FM anymore – radios have been replaced with smart speakers. Perfect reception every time was the motivation for them.

Any pirates that do appear are either mostly or fully automated. There is no point in pumping time, money and effort into anything better. The risks are just not worth the (very limited) rewards. So any sign of attention from Comreg, and they're gone or on the move.

Also noticeable is the lack of stations applying for temporary licences. The BAI hardly ever update the list of upcoming stations. The last 15 months with Covid hasn’t helped either – less people on the roads commuting, means a reduction in FM listeners.

To be honest, I think we'll only see the odd pop up pirate from now onwards just doing it for a bit of fun over a weekend or whatever.

Declan A Walsh

JDxtra wrote: »

I think the answer from now on will generally be "very little".

Broadcast radio has been in decline for the last few years.

Younger generations just aren't interested in it. It simply can't compete against the choice and freshness offered by smartphones, mobile data and streaming services coupled with Bluetooth / Apple Car Play / Android Auto. They are not going to interact with a station for “shout outs”. They have endless other options to communicate online to an audience.

Even my parents don’t listen to FM anymore – radios have been replaced with smart speakers. Perfect reception every time was the motivation for them.

Any pirates that do appear are either mostly or fully automated. There is no point in pumping time, money and effort into anything better. The risks are just not worth the (very limited) rewards. So any sign of attention from Comreg, and they're gone or on the move.

Also noticeable is the lack of stations applying for temporary licences. The BAI hardly ever update the list of upcoming stations. The last 15 months with Covid hasn’t helped either – less people on the roads commuting, means a reduction in FM listeners.

To be honest, I think we'll only see the odd pop up pirate from now onwards just doing it for a bit of fun over a weekend or whatever.

All very true.

A couple of observations, though.

There still tends to be a bit more pirate activity on weekends in Dublin, mainly oldies pirates like Energy Power AM, Retro FM and ABC 96FM. Chilled dance station The Beach crops up every so often, including last weekend.

On the temporary license front, Easy Radio is in the middle of a weekend run at the moment. What is interesting about that is that it was indeed a pirate until last year, and some of its presenters were involved in pirate activity over the last year or two.

astragte

James singer wrote: »

heard redrock radio got another visit last night and are gone from fb again

Where did you hear redrock radio got a visit ? And are gone from Facebook?

cor

Picked up 1494AM on Sunday morning around 10am on the car radio here (Dublin North). Sounding good, playing oldies with ID “1494AM”. They were gone around midday.

Declan A Walsh

cor wrote: »

Picked up 1494AM on Sunday morning around 10am on the car radio here (Dublin North). Sounding good, playing oldies with ID “1494AM”. They were gone around midday.

That must be the medium wave pirate that sometimes broadcasts from Dundalk.

DavidJC

Picked up lots of lovely Sporatic E on several days a week or two ago in South Dublin.
RNE CLAS Spain around 88.2
Portuguese news radio around 88
Seville FC FM on 91.6
ONDACERO on 105.7 from southern Spain (The Beach was off air) and the same station also on 90.4 on another day.

Took a video and some photos of the RDS..
Remember the peak is in the afternoon during summer and high pressure benefits conditions hugely.
Between 3pm and 5pm seems best. A car radio is usually best at discerning - often the signal comes in almost as clear as a local station.

Remember it usually starts at 87.5 and progresses up the band as things open up.
Happy DXing!

Antenna

Around 9:30 this morning had "MEDI 1" (Morocco) on 87.6 on car radio by E skip and sounding overmodulated, there were others too but with no RDS decode - in the afternoon I received "R ITALIA" on 87.5

DavidJC

Antenna wrote: »

Around 9:30 this morning had "MEDI 1" (Morocco) on 87.6 on car radio by E skip and sounding overmodulated, there were others too but with no RDS decode - in the afternoon I received "R ITALIA" on 87.5

Good find! The north African stations are often over modulated. Sometimes louder isn't better..


That 87.6 Medi 1 transmitter looks like just 5kw from Casablanca.
The good thing around that part of the band is there is very little locally (except RTE R1 on 87.8 which carries far and wide).
High pressure back this weekend so will keep my ears peeled.

KildareP

Listening around now I'm back on the road fully the last few weeks.

98FM & FM104 seem to be in an all out balls to the wall battle for loudness lately. FM104 have never gone for clean but 98FM did sound as loud whilst also being fairly clean for quite a while. Not anymore. Although 98FM did fix a strange ringing sound on their low end.

Another going balls to the wall is East Coast FM but their 8200 just doesn't have the horsepower to keep up and is pounding and shredding the absolute bijaesus out of everything to stay loud.

Spin sounds decent, loud but with much more relaxed processing although they still have the ringing sound on bass that 98FM did.

Q102 loud and relatively clean. Maybe lacking bass.
Classic Hits sound louder than before but still nice. Probably nicer than Q.

Today FM does not sound nice at all IMO. Far too much high end bacon frying, find myself switching off after a few minutes. Their 100.9 and 101.8 frequencies in Dublin seem to have different levels and processing applied which is very annoying as the radio automatically hops back and forward.

Radio 1 sounds very nice for speech and music tends to be nice and open although you can tell it is tuned for speech (which is primarily their output anyway). 2FM on the other hand sounds constantly "muddy" and gets easily drowned out in traffic noise.

Sunshine sounding a bit quieter than the rest and a bit of distortion but they are on an older processor (8300?) and also going for easy listening format.

Nova also that bit quieter and with more noticeable distortion (8200) but with Nova it actually mixes in well with the rock format.

iRadio are loud and relatively open but their mics sound awful. Very nasally and pulling up lots of background crap and hiss (you can hear the mics being switched on and off during the news inserts).

Beat on 102.0 still sounding absolutely diabolical since early Jan. Are they using Skype to feed the transmitter?!

Midlands 103 also a strange setup that sometimes sounds nice and other times very odd. Bass is being heavily limited which creates a pumping effect that causes very dramatic and frankly odd sounding changes throughout many songs driven by what's going on in the low end.

TheBMG

KildareP wrote: »

Listening around now I'm back on the road fully the last few weeks.

98FM & FM104 seem to be in an all out balls to the wall battle for loudness lately. FM104 have never gone for clean but 98FM did sound as loud whilst also being fairly clean for quite a while. Not anymore. Although 98FM did fix a strange ringing sound on their low end.

Another going balls to the wall is East Coast FM but their 8200 just doesn't have the horsepower to keep up and is pounding and shredding the absolute bijaesus out of everything to stay loud.

Spin sounds decent, loud but with much more relaxed processing although they still have the ringing sound on bass that 98FM did.

Q102 loud and relatively clean. Maybe lacking bass.
Classic Hits sound louder than before but still nice. Probably nicer than Q.

Today FM does not sound nice at all IMO. Far too much high end bacon frying, find myself switching off after a few minutes. Their 100.9 and 101.8 frequencies in Dublin seem to have different levels and processing applied which is very annoying as the radio automatically hops back and forward.

Radio 1 sounds very nice for speech and music tends to be nice and open although you can tell it is tuned for speech (which is primarily their output anyway). 2FM on the other hand sounds constantly "muddy" and gets easily drowned out in traffic noise.

Sunshine sounding a bit quieter than the rest and a bit of distortion but they are on an older processor (8300?) and also going for easy listening format.

Nova also that bit quieter and with more noticeable distortion (8200) but with Nova it actually mixes in well with the rock format.

iRadio are loud and relatively open but their mics sound awful. Very nasally and pulling up lots of background crap and hiss (you can hear the mics being switched on and off during the news inserts).

Beat on 102.0 still sounding absolutely diabolical since early Jan. Are they using Skype to feed the transmitter?!

Midlands 103 also a strange setup that sometimes sounds nice and other times very odd. Bass is being heavily limited which creates a pumping effect that causes very dramatic and frankly odd sounding changes throughout many songs driven by what's going on in the low end.

I’d agree with you about 98 and 104. Spin have the better sound. Personally don’t get why everybody is massively over compressing at the moment tbh.

I’ve also noticed the weird iRadio hiss .. AFAIK they use Shure SM7B mics which can be very quiet so I’m wondering if mic choice along with overprocessing is to blame

Mr. MooYagi

What’s happening out there today lads?

Antenna

DavidJC wrote: »

High pressure back this weekend so will keep my ears peeled.

- enhanced reception of nearer distant stations - such as UK stations - is related to high pressure.

However Sporadic-E with very distant stations (stations from southern Europe skipping in on FM) is not related to high pressure, though tends to also happen in summer

On Friday morning (yesterday) around 7:30 on car radio I got a couple of more unusual ones due to Sp-E with RDS (just about):

87.6 BOB (Slovenia)
87.9 K3 Radio (Bosnia)

Declan A Walsh

Mr. MooYagi wrote: »

What’s happening out there today lads?

The situation around south Dublin today:
91.0FM - Hot FM
94.3 FM - Relay of Charity Radio (off and on during the day)
96.0 FM - ABC 96FM - when it wasn't drowned out by Radio 4!
105.7FM - The Beach - I only heard it briefly - I assume it was The Beach

1395kh MW - Energy Power AM

Mr. MooYagi

Any sunny Sunday operators on air today?

Declan A Walsh

Mr. MooYagi wrote: »

Any sunny Sunday operators on air today?

Briefly picked up the following earlier - wasn't doing a proper scan:
92.0 FM - Retro FM
1395 kh MW - Energy Power AM. Initially it was playing it's own music and then was relaying Retro FM.

Declan A Walsh

Declan A Walsh wrote: »

Briefly picked up the following earlier - wasn't doing a proper scan:
92.0 FM - Retro FM
1395 kh MW - Energy Power AM. Initially it was playing it's own music and then was relaying Retro FM.

Update this afternoon:
91.0 FM - Hot FM
99.5FM - Relay of Energy Power AM
105.7 FM - The Beach

Energy Power AM has resumed with it's own playlist again. Retro FM must have had live programming earlier - it's usually around that time that Energy relays it on a Sunday.

ITV2

Freedab mux back on again today.

Toasted Bread

Long time listener, first time caller etc etc.

Heard IceRadio on Friday evening back on 93.2 in the car, signal was weak around Liffey Valley but got much stronger and clearer after the N3 exit northbound all the way to Malahide. Had a check on their stream to confirm that it was them, good to hear them back.

RetroNow on 105.2 is weak in Lucan but up around Blanch/Clonsilla was strong, good mix of tunes on that station.

Hot FM as always on 91.0, less said the better although sometimes when I tune in the music isn't half bad.

Galaxy coming in loud and clear on 98.9 in Maynooth/Leixlip, seem to have improved the programming since the last time I listened back in Feb/March.

That's all I heard this weekend anyway, haven't checked out the FreeDAB as the car is too old!

Brian CivilEng

Bit of fun today with likes of BBC Radio Cymru and Manx Radio coming in clear as day from home here in D5. Also heard someone speaking Spanish around 92fm, but signal didn't last long enough to get a station ID.

Using an XHDATA D-808

JDxtra

Toasted Bread wrote: »

Long time listener, first time caller etc etc.

No kidding - registered 9 years, and a post count of 1!

end of the road

i see that galaxy fm's website isn't working now.
their stream hasn't worked regularly for a little bit also.
i presume there isn't a full live schedule yet?

Antenna

Spirit on 549 kHz suffering from distorted audio presently (not all the time, coming and going?)

Max Power 2010

Ice radio has moved to 99.4, this might upset some weekend operators.