Removal of Tullamore MW mast.

Mickey Mike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120947795#Comment_120947795

A bit confusing alright, I'm talking about both.

Pelvis Parsley

Both.

thejuggler

Summerhill

squonk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120947345#Comment_120947345

I’d say there’d be a few doing the rounds who would happily remove that copper in a voluntary fashion 😀

TheBMG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120950075#Comment_120950075

Indeed there were several incidents back in the day of OBs disappearing mid show because budding entrepreneurs had dug up the P&T copper cables!

Pelvis Parsley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120950075#Comment_120950075

Very poor at reinstating the ground though-mind you, they would work fast.

Tow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120950133#Comment_120950133

The local farmer may even recover their JCB after the work.

ford fiesta

are the transmitter halls in tullamore and summerhill intact ?

what will happen these ?

TheBMG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120957339#Comment_120957339

I’m guessing if they’re a viable source of revenue they’ll remain .. otherwise there could be some decent farming land in Meath up for sale (can’t tell you how Tullamore is for farming sadly!)

L1011

Tullamore is getting a small modern tower erected so presumably the building will retain use for that. Summerhill I would expect to have the copper in the ground removed for scrap and be sold as farmland. It is not of any realistic use for any other form of transmission - AM didn't look for height for starters

ford fiesta

Even though it relayed Radio 1 for the past number of years, it is hard to believe that the transmitter site was only used 'as intended' (as the primary method of broadcasting Atlantic 252) for 12 years.

Shame to see it all demolished now

TheBMG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120958876#Comment_120958876

I haven’t been inside the 252 facility in about twenty years and things may have changed with RTE taking it back in 2003ish but I don’t recall ever seeing any third party gear or even stuff that could’ve been used to the benefit of RTE (microwave links, back ups, telemetry etc). It really did seem to be a stand alone facility at the time.

OT but even with the 252 mast being so slender I was able to see it with the naked eye from Three Rock mountain on a number of occasions. You could see it gleaming in the distance quite clearly if you had a very bright sunny day and you knew where to look

Mickey Mike

I wonder if they have all the ground all around the tided up, I suppose the mast must be in absolute sh1t, only to be recycled, some load of metal to remove.

Pelvis Parsley

Another factor which conspired against RTE (mostly due to their own incompetence), was interference with Algeria. Anyone north of the TX would not be able to null that out, even if they cared to.

I was tuning around, and Chaine 3 in North Africa, unencumbered by little old Paddy Land is coming in like a train.

Sample is via a Technics tuner from the early 80s, direct line input to a PC.

https://soundcloud.com/roundy-mooney/chaine-3-sample?si=3774250cb515474a9bba054feac579ee&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Losty Dublin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120968067#Comment_120968067

Algeria run 1.5 megawatts on 252 and half that in the evening, which is multiples of the output that RTE were allowed to use per frequency allocation agreements.

If this is your idea of incompetence......

Pelvis Parsley

No, it's not-what's with the dickishness?

Incompetence is not applying for a more suitable frequency allocation in the first place.

Or applying for a change when the issue became apparent-the whole band was empty FFS.

Incompetence, or maybe wilful intent, is denying you're going to knock the thing and then doing so anyway, while the lads with the pyrotechnics were up the road.

I'm well aware of what Algerie are putting out, what's your point?

PukkaStukka

BBC LW on 198khz is also on the way out. Certainly sea farers would have a legitimate argument about alternatives to the beloved shipping forecast whilst at sea.

BBC Radio 4 begins information campaign to transition listeners from Long Wave - Media Centre

Pelvis Parsley

Some mild protesting has already become evident-the same reasoning as accompanied announcements around the closure of 252 (the first time).

I suspect they will come to nothing though.

By accident or apathy, the audio quality on 198 has suffered intermittent issues on and off over the last couple of years, with excessive sibilance at times making for difficult listening.

PukkaStukka

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120974768#Comment_120974768

Funnily enough and when holidaying in to the Scottish Highlands, I found reception of 198 LW from Droitwich occasionally flakey, whereas 252 was always clear. Even after they halved the power output from Clarkestown a few years ago

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120968804#Comment_120968804

It could be argued that RTE were not running at their allocated power level and were no longer able to after the transmitter replacement in 2007. In addition to that, they dropped the power further to 150/60, ensuring that Algeria would easily overpower it at night.

Antenna

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120958943#Comment_120958943

There is a tower made available to mobile operators etc just inside the entrance on the left, visible here, which would count as third party use, been there for several years (since sometime after Atlantic 252 I would think):

County Meath - Google Maps

TAFKAlawhec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120968999#Comment_120968999

This has been discussed a fair bit in the past.

From the GE75 allocations, all LW allocations higher in frequency than 254/252 kHz were to the east of the iron curtain.

Those of use with fair memories will remember the ill-fated Musicmann 279 project looking to establish a radio station on 279 kHz from the Isle of Man - one of the noted pitfalls was that while the frequency was cleared for 500kW ERP daytime, it would have been restricted (at least initially) to an ERP of 10kW at nighttime.

So presumably there were restrictions to AM broadcasting in western Europe in the upper echolons of the LW band at the time - indeed the prior European MW conference in 1948 had noted objection from both Ireland & the UK to the Czechoslovak 272kHz allocation on the basis it could interference local ship-to-shore communications which were on around these frequencies at that time (these had gone by 1975, hence Ireland were awarded a broadcasting allocation on 252 kHz with night-time restrictions in GE75).

As for going on to another frequency on the LW band, this would have necessitated not only filing in the relevant paperwork to the ITU & gaining approval from countries with the same allocation, but also would have needed significant physical & technical work to be done at the Summerhill site to change transmissions to a significantly different frequency on the band. As it was, as someone who lived north to north west of the site, listening to the station in the evening was not an issue concerning Co-channel interference from Algeria.

Altogether, with MW & LW broadcasts in Europe being a largely dwindling medium over the last couple decades, there was likely little good reason for RTÉ to actively invest very heavily into such facilities, and recent financial scandles aside, the was one area that RTÉ were somewhat fine to keep opaque about the facilities in Summerhill (and to a lesser extent in Tullamore) - give too much notice as of the closure of such broadcast facilities and you end up with a few noisy anoraks astroturfing to try and keep transmissions going that pretty much no-one - including themselves - are actually actively listening to, so RTÉ did what some others have done elsewhere and give just a couple of weeks notice before pulling the plug and the lack of any effective outrage on it means they made the correct decision here IMO.

Hotblack Desiato

From the GE75 allocations, all LW allocations higher in frequency than 254/252 kHz were to the east of the iron curtain.

I wonder what the reason for that was.

ford fiesta

Great detailed 2RN footage here of Summerhill PRE and POST demolition here:

How they knocked the Atlantic 252 mast - YouTube

Antenna

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121008859#Comment_121008859

Same video also available here with it seems better picture quality :

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/2rn_clarkstown-transmitter-on-the-27th-july-2023-activity-7092867491017678848-b_Ki

I think the year 1988 is inaccurate for the mast being built, was it not 1989 ?

Hotblack Desiato

Ridiculous the Youtube upload is only 480p. The LinkedIn one is better but still not great. Looks like they took out a couple of trees...

TAFKAlawhec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121002498#Comment_121002498

My honest answer for that is - I don't know! However, I suspect that at the time the allocations were drawn up, the higher frequency end of the LW band (from ~260 kHz up) either was still officially allocated for ship-to-shore transmissions in some part of ITU Region 1 and so needed to be protected, or that it was to protect NDB beacons somewhere, possibly in the Atlantic, from interference.

I'd also say that if the 263/272/281 kHz allocations were available to western Europe from what was agreed in GE75, Ireland would have almost certainly wanted to have taken one of those frequencies instead of being left with the compromise 254 kHz frequency which was cleared for Tullamore for 500kW omnidirectional radiation during daytime, but at night had directional restrictions towards Finland & Algeria that were -7db from an otherwise 500kW max ERP allocation. For those doing the maths, -7db from 500kW ERP is of course 100kW and when it came to setting up the Radio Tara site at Summerhill, RTE & RTL clearly thought there was no point in setting up a directional aerial system to meet these night time ITU requirements especially as these directional restrictions would have affected GB coverage anyway, and so settled on transmitting 100kW omnidirectional during night hours (albeit not transmitting past 7pm at first, which changed not too long after).

Hotblack Desiato

It just seems crazy that it spent its last few years in an almost empty band sharing a frequency with one of the most powerful broadcasters in the world... sod's law... but why seemingly no limits on what Algeria can pump out??

Pelvis Parsley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121016618#Comment_121016618

Thanks for all this info-it's very interesting.

Antenna

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120957385#Comment_120957385

I'm sure I read someone suggesting that a solar farm might go at 'Summerhill-Clarkstown' (ex LW 252 site) - on Long Wave Radio Atlantic 252 | Facebook page

There is a 38kV substation at the western end of the site so the electricity infastructure is already there for a significant sized one if that was the case:

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4624689,-6.6823034,63m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu