Digital radio switchover gets poor reception

On May 25, 9:11*pm, Mark Carver wrote:
Mike Henry wrote:
Sometimes there are extra slots added - stuff like "we're just hearing
about an accident at blah blah... over to Jerina Adams at the travel
centre" and they'll do an unplanned impromptu TA. But this is the
exception not the rule, and as I say they still wait until the end of the
record first! (Would like to be proved wrong again!)

The BBC LRs in the South East now all seem to use the same bloke at the end of
a crap sounding ISDN line, Barry Lewis ? So by default their TA periods are
all different.

--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

Yes, Humberside, Lincs, et al have a bloke with a bunged up nose.

Bill

On May 25, 9:14*pm, Mark Carver wrote:
wrote:

Then, if the M1 was blocked at j29 say, like is often is,

I'd get advance warning and I could go via Chesterfield. Whereas if I
let the radio hop about between Sutton C and Holme Moss like it
usually does I might miss it. Is that right Mark? Yes, you can hear R
Sheff right down there, in case anyone's wondering.

Chesterfield R1-4 is a relay of Sutton Coldfield,
That's strange because Holme Moss is only half the distance (I'm
guessing 25miles versus 50-ish) and has a much clearer path. I mean,
driving round the Chesterfield area SC would be marginal/impossible
but HM would be good/mediocre. In very crude terms, SC starts to
dominate round about Derby. Looking at Information Sheets 1906(6) 8109
and 1903(8) 8206 shows that the HM signal extends to Derby and beyond,
whereas the SC signal doesn't make it to Chesterfield. Incidentally,
you can tell the dates of BBC Engineering sheets from the reference
number. These two were published in 1906 and 1903 respectively, I
believe.

and is also a Radio
Sheffield relay, so I presume both Holme Moss and SC would have to carry R
Sheffield's EON bursts. If so, then in theory you should get Sheffield travel
news in and around the town.
I never seem to hear Sheff traffic until I'm inside the HM/
Chesterfield area, but maybe it's because it's too weak to switch
automatically.

Anyway, here's a laugh! This morning at 1128 my R4 was automatically
displaced replaced by R Sheff, and 'traffic' flashed on the radio. The
'traffic flash' was timed exacly right for me to be treated to a
gramophone recording by The Jackson Five. I switched to Sheff manually
just afterwards, to hear a real traffic flash about three minutes
later. Now, time-honoured custom dictates that traffic flashes on
Sheff are just before the hour, then at 20 past and 20 to. So they
hoisted the traffic flag at the wrong time and then had the traffic
flash at a different but equally wrong time.

Mr Carver, I look forward to your response, since I have raised here
several important points!

Bill

On May 25, 10:00*pm, Mark Carver wrote:
hwh wrote:

Chesterfield in common with all relays of that size is a 'dumb' transposer I'm
sure ?

It will be dumb if it's in Chesterfield. They can't even build a
straight steeple.

Bill

wrote:
On May 25, 9:14 pm, Mark Carver wrote:

Chesterfield R1-4 is a relay of Sutton Coldfield,

That's strange because Holme Moss is only half the distance (I'm
guessing 25miles versus 50-ish) and has a much clearer path. I mean,
driving round the Chesterfield area SC would be marginal/impossible
but HM would be good/mediocre.

I think it's probably because Chesterfield's transmit allocations for R1-4 are
only 300 kHz below HM's. That wouldn't make transposition impossible, but more
difficult than the 700 kHz gap with SC ?

I never seem to hear Sheff traffic until I'm inside the HM/
Chesterfield area, but maybe it's because it's too weak to switch
automatically.

Perhaps, but you've still had Sheff break in when tuned to R4 SC or Chesterfield ?

Anyway, here's a laugh! This morning at 1128 my R4 was automatically
displaced replaced by R Sheff, and 'traffic' flashed on the radio. The
'traffic flash' was timed exacly right for me to be treated to a
gramophone recording by The Jackson Five. I switched to Sheff manually
just afterwards, to hear a real traffic flash about three minutes
later. Now, time-honoured custom dictates that traffic flashes on
Sheff are just before the hour, then at 20 past and 20 to. So they
hoisted the traffic flag at the wrong time and then had the traffic
flash at a different but equally wrong time.

They might have been playing their travel jingle on 'Pre Fade' (a sort of
rehearsal mode on the mixing desk), and the trigger still got sent to the RDS
computer. I don't know whether Paul R's clever software has made it that far
north yet ? :-)



--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

Woody wrote:

Your radio should not switch between Berks and Oxford if they are
different stations (rather than one being an opt-out of the
other?) Make sure your REG setting is on to stop it - by default
it usually is not.


REG? No such button.

fx pause

I've just RTFM and it turns out this is enabled by holding the AF button
for more than 2 seconds. I'll try tomorrow. It seems to work fine in
the garage, but of course right now they're playing country music and
not traffic news.

Andy

Mark Carver wrote:

104.1 from Hannington ? It covers most of Southern England, along with
Heart Berks (formally 2-Ten FM 102.9). It's difficult not to receive it !

Elevates those two stations into regional status really.


I'm in East Berks 25 miles from Hannington. Doesn't it have weak
signals in this direction on some channels?

Andy

Andy Champ wrote:
Mark Carver wrote:

104.1 from Hannington ? It covers most of Southern England, along
with Heart Berks (formally 2-Ten FM 102.9). It's difficult not to
receive it !

Elevates those two stations into regional status really.


I'm in East Berks 25 miles from Hannington. Doesn't it have weak
signals in this direction on some channels?

Yes, but only for DTT.

However your most likely R Berks Txs are Windsor Castle 95.4, and Henley 94.6,
the RDS would switch you to Hannington from about Wokingham-ish westward.

--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

On Wed, 26 May 2010 21:05:33 +0100, Mark Carver
wrote:

Anyway, here's a laugh! This morning at 1128 my R4 was automatically
displaced replaced by R Sheff, and 'traffic' flashed on the radio. The
'traffic flash' was timed exacly right for me to be treated to a
gramophone recording by The Jackson Five.

I think Mr. W means 10:28 not 11:28.

I switched to Sheff manually
just afterwards, to hear a real traffic flash about three minutes
later. Now, time-honoured custom dictates that traffic flashes on
Sheff are just before the hour, then at 20 past and 20 to. So they
hoisted the traffic flag at the wrong time and then had the traffic
flash at a different but equally wrong time.

They seem to be on the hour and the half hour from what I can see.

They might have been playing their travel jingle on 'Pre Fade' (a sort of
rehearsal mode on the mixing desk), and the trigger still got sent to the RDS
computer. I don't know whether Paul R's clever software has made it that far
north yet ? :-)

Indeed it has :-) and although the logging to disk is sadly not turned
on, there's enough history to screen scrape, which reveals TA active:
10:27:29-10:27:31
10:27:32-10:29:12

10:30:45-10:31:24
10:59:25-10:59:53
11:30:52-11:31:34

The fundamental problem with the way it is driven, on this station using
sub-audible embedded tones, leaves the system open to undesired
mis-triggering, which seems to be what happened on this occasion between
10:27:29 and 10:29:12.
Some stations do it properly (IMHO) using GPIs off the playout system.

Clever software or not (and it really isn't that clever at all), the old
garbage in garbage out adage still applies.

In message , Mark Carver
writes
Andy Champ wrote:
Mark Carver wrote:

104.1 from Hannington ? It covers most of Southern England, along
with Heart Berks (formally 2-Ten FM 102.9). It's difficult not to
receive it !

Elevates those two stations into regional status really.

I'm in East Berks 25 miles from Hannington. Doesn't it have weak
signals in this direction on some channels?

Yes, but only for DTT.

However your most likely R Berks Txs are Windsor Castle 95.4, and
Henley 94.6, the RDS would switch you to Hannington from about
Wokingham-ish westward.

Radio Berkshire from Windsor Castle is a very poor signal indeed. It
used to be good but, around ten years ago, it suddenly went very weak -
so weak that, when a couple of miles to the north or to the east of
Slough (for example, when passing Heathrow on the M25), it gets
completely swamped by a London pirate station. I suspect that the aerial
fell down, and nobody noticed. Near Beaconsfield, I have to use the
Henley signal.
--
Ian

On Wed, 26 May 2010 21:44:41 +0000, Paul Ratcliffe wrote:

I think Mr. W means 10:28 not 11:28.

UTC or BST though?