These transmitters consume insane amounts of power. Per Wikipedia, that's 500 kW of rated transmission power for this one [1], so probably a solid megawatt of grid power input.
At 30 ct/kWh, that's 300€ per hour, 7200€ per day and about 2.6 million € a year - for a customer base that is only decreasing.
And by the virtue of shortwave propagation, it could be heard across the world. For the past month and a half (from when the news of its impending shutdown was revealed) I was regularly picking it up in Australia right up until the bitter end.
Also bear in mind that Droitwitch is radiating 3 different services. Talk Sport (1053 kHz), Radio 4 (198 kHz) and Radio Five Live (693 kHz).
My suspicion is that this means an exciter and a stack of amps per service, which then go through a two stage combiner and out to the antenna. There might even be a pair of exciters and amps per service depending on redundancy.
The combiners (certainly for FM/DAB/TV services) also cause cumulative attenuation as the signal gets combined each time, so even if all 3 are radiating at the same power, the first in the chain might need twice as much amplification to make up for losses.
The Droitwich transmitter used to transmit on exactly 200 kHz which I always thought was very cool, but it moved to 198 kHz in 1988 to better harmonize with European stations.
The program was mostly the same as BBC Radio 4 but it used to diverge at certain times of day. I used to be woken up at 5am every day by my parents clock radio with the farming news which was very dull, but easy to sleep through.
"Longwave", usually written without a space, is an informal and not well-defined term for radio frequencies lower than the AM broadcast band, which in Europe is known as "medium wave".
In the USA there have never been commercial longwave stations, though various WWV time signals are broadcast in that band.
"Although the transmitter was in Ireland, the signal's reach meant that it was often looked upon as a "UK national station". Reception reports were received from such locations as Berlin, Finland, Ibiza and Moscow."
That is too bad, you would think these could be kept active for historical purposes. But seems these services are all being turned off even though I heard a few were very useful in this day and age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort#:~:text...
At 30 ct/kWh, that's 300€ per hour, 7200€ per day and about 2.6 million € a year - for a customer base that is only decreasing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droitwich_Transmitting_Station
And by the virtue of shortwave propagation, it could be heard across the world. For the past month and a half (from when the news of its impending shutdown was revealed) I was regularly picking it up in Australia right up until the bitter end.
Radio stations are usually measured by the last of those: Effective radiated power.
You can have a radio station with a 50,000 watt ERP, but running only a 2,500 watt transmitter.
For FM radio stations, it's all about the height of the transmitter above average terrain. For AM, it's about the ground conductivity and frequency.
I once worked at a 1,000-watt AM station that had a signal much larger and clearer signal than the 5,000-watt AM station a few miles away.
I'm not a radio engineer, but I'm sure there are plenty on HN who can correct and clarify what I've written.
My suspicion is that this means an exciter and a stack of amps per service, which then go through a two stage combiner and out to the antenna. There might even be a pair of exciters and amps per service depending on redundancy.
The combiners (certainly for FM/DAB/TV services) also cause cumulative attenuation as the signal gets combined each time, so even if all 3 are radiating at the same power, the first in the chain might need twice as much amplification to make up for losses.
edit: MB21 (of course) has some fantastic technical info about Droitwitch: https://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/gallerypage.php?txid=1454&page... and there's some great pics here, too: https://www.radiorewind.co.uk/radio1/droitwich.htm
I believe they're still using a pair of Marconi B6042 transmitters (250kW each, in parallel) to provide at least one of the services.
Going by [1], emitted power.
[1] https://www.bbceng.info/Operations/transmitter_ops/Reminisce...
The program was mostly the same as BBC Radio 4 but it used to diverge at certain times of day. I used to be woken up at 5am every day by my parents clock radio with the farming news which was very dull, but easy to sleep through.
In the USA there have never been commercial longwave stations, though various WWV time signals are broadcast in that band.
That, and Atlantic 252 (I believe now long gone) were what he woke up to every morning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_252
"Although the transmitter was in Ireland, the signal's reach meant that it was often looked upon as a "UK national station". Reception reports were received from such locations as Berlin, Finland, Ibiza and Moscow."
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.