I Found This Transmitter In The STRANGEST Place! - Wallasey
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- Опубликовано: 20 май 2024
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There is some irony to the death of AM here being at the dead centre of Wallasey.
AM seems alive and well in Australia. I’m not aware of many, if any, station closures here. Maybe it’s because we need the coverage AM provides.
Lots of country stations moving to FM band.
who ever reads this i hope you have a nice day
You too , mate
Cheers
Same! 😊
cheers
You too man
Yes. AM would be perfect for small private stations. The word which springs to mind is "gatekeeping"
Hi Lewis, looking at the mast elements closely, for me this is definitely a blast from the past.... After I graduated as an RF engineer back in 1993, I got a job as an RF project engineer at a company that was contracted to build new HF infrastructure for the Belgian MoD. All antennas and mast elements were manufactured and supplied by (then) CSA Antennas located in Rochester, on the banks of the river Strood. Those were the *very* same mast elements that are visible in your video.... I oversaw construction of well over a kilometer in total of these mast elements in different configurations for our MoD.... Also the anchor plates and the "dead end" terminations of the guy wires :-) Sure brings back memories indeed. Keep up the good work! 73 de Glenn ON4WIX
It's the river medway
0:03 I didn't know you were filming me, I will allow for it in this case as you got my good side. Great video mate thanks again. "Last time I seen legs like that they were hanging out of a crows nest". PS That's what you call dedication, man went a year back in his comments and followed up on it, good man yourself.
Birds aren't real !!!!! Birds aren't real !!!!!!!
@@bobroberts2371"respect my authorityyyy"
He just flew back from the Flatearth... show a bit of respect! He dead tired!
@@fretlessfender ... Ahh good old Flat earther ... Not even us crows believe in that keek.
@@TheRisenPeopleEire He finally landed back on the good old globe... bad propagation on that silly pizza planet!
I have never heard of *"Anti climb paint."*
commonly known as anti vandal paint
It's horrible stuff, gets all over your hands and clothes..... Still better than the old school roofing pitch with glass in it as anticlimb.
Essentially the same as the "vandal grease" that he references.
It’s thick paint that never cures. Slippery as hell and smears everywhere if you get it on you
That anti climb paint feels unpleasant
We are all going to spend far more hot sunny afternoons in a cemetery, than you'd imagine.
It's a pity to see medium wave AM leave it's last stronghold in western Europe, the UK. I remember Absolute Radio with strong signals here in Germany. Our long wave transmitters went in 2013 and medium wave in 2015. Maybe it'll come back with hobby broadcasters as shortwave did? There are some stations already in the Netherlands.
I was on the BBC Transmitter Maintenance Team (TMT) in the 1970s based in North Wales and Wallasey transmitter was on our patch. The mast radiator then was just surrounded with a palisade fence and I recall one incident where someone had fashioned a V shaped metal strip on the end of a wooden pole and jammed it in the spark gap at the mast base so shutting the transmitter down, so this may explain the later beefing up of the surrounding wall. Also in 1978 the frequency change had to be done overnight - spooky!
Thats a great idea. A radio club should buy the Antenna😊
Do you have any comprehension of what that real estate is worth?
AM has a nice warmth like vinyl lets go back in time
I have started scanning AM CB and Ham frequencies and it is clear that there is still a hardcore of users (over this side of the pond but especailly the US) that love the modulation type and I must admit I am being drawn in too. M7BLC.
Well, there is a reason "AM" is used on aircraft frequencies and why it was used extensively by police radios fitted to cars, fire engine radios, also a lot of PMR from the 1970s and 1980s...
Now it is just aircraft using it.
In the late 80s I used to have a Uniden 2830 in my car and used that on USB mobile with friends on CB frequencies!
AM was far better than FM when driving around. It just seemed to be clearer and louder.
There's a VOR in Wallasey, well more like Meols really. You can see it from the train and it looks l a bit like a flying saucer landed in a farmers field.
That's what I was thinking of, I called it an aircraft locator! I keep meaning to go and have a look at that when I am over there next.
As a former RF engineer for ericsson I know all about overgrown radio sites. Years ago they cut the budget for preventive maintenance so all the sites slowly overgrown with brambles and other weeds. In the later days I always had some pruning cutters and a small chainsaw with me to get access to the sites. Cost cutting is great for nature but for the engineer it means having bandages in the van. (Yes... I hate brambles since then)
Wooooo! More radio stuff! Mich love Lewis!
I agree! There is still a place for AM broadcast! When propagation is nice I like to listen to the BBC here in Holland... Nice and warm sound... call me silly...
Here in Hungary, AM is basically dead, only the main radio, called "Kossuth" and a radio service for foreign language communities are still available in the whole country only in the daytime until ~08:30PM. If I remember right, AM stations are disappeared well before 2008, now only FM stations are allowed to broadcast. When the conditions are good, some AM stations from the neighbouring countries can be received at night.
It's too expensive to run an AM station because of the power levels required and therefore the electricity bill. It's just not cost effective to keep them going. Unlike in the US where it is mandated in law that AM provision should be retained in order that it be used for EmComm's. It's a shame, I used to like TMS on LW, but alas, no more...
A real shame as most DABradio station audio quality is worse than AM, and a lot is in mono anyway.
Lewis, great presentation as usual, I prefer the AM modulation especially 198kHZ Long-wave. Idea for you, the Woodside Mersey tunnel ventilator used to have a radar scanner up there and other stuff. The Ventilator is a magnificent structure and if you managed to get them to give you a tour you will find some very interesting machinery that I think you and your veiwers would enjoy. Very best, Woffy.
Thanks as always!!
The RADAR isn't used now, I remember always seeing that rotating many years ago when I went past. I just didn't know who was seeing the feed from it.
Some coastguard aerials used to be on the Liverpool Cathedral together with the aerial farm for PMR, Taxis, utility companies and the current JUICE FM or whatever it is called now on 107.6MHz.
There is a transmitter room up there too which is interesting if you get a look inside. It tends to be locked up more now after a Liverpool Solicitor was said to have hidden until after closing time and jumped off the roof. That story was in the national and local press too. Some say it was because of who he was mixed up with and it might not have been what it appeared to be.
If you are in Liverpool, go for a tower tour of the cathedral and have a look at the aerials! Take your Meshtastic nodes up there.
Glad to see you are back home and putting out videos. Would love to see some footage if you captured any on your trip. God bless you Lewis. KlodFather
Tony Blackburn used to mention those frequencies on air for Bournemouth, Poole and surrounding areas on Radio One as station identifiers just because he came from that area. Great video as usual, awaiting the next one 🙂
Lewis! oxford shortwave has a vid up of the buzzer getting jammed with "muzik" i wondered if you could use your contacts and see if they can use "lost in music" for the jamming as that would be LEGENDARY!
Hi Lewis - what amazing research and historical audio clips! Very impressive! I'm astonjshed that AM is in use at all - I have never knowingly or or willingly listened to AM since I was a child growing up in Cyprus and playing Radio Beirut on my old valve world receiver while I fell asleep. As a HiFi freak since my teens, AM just doesn't tick the boxes for me for music. As a tranxporter of essential spoken information however I can understand it has its place. Great videography as usual - I love the aerial shots (both meanings intended!) All the best, Rob in Switzerland
You will hate the poor quality of DABradio then, it's revolting. I remember years ago getting my first DABradio home and thinking it was going to be brilliant after watching all the TV adverts. What a disappointment to find stations in MONO at 32 and 64Kbps. Some were 192Kbps and a dance station was 128Kbps, but the more that appeared, the more the quality was ruined. Now DAB is in a right state. It is the same adverts being played on every station, but with a few different tunes and jingles for different station names. No one listens to DAB.
Even in my cars since 2012 having DABradio is nothing special, it has ALWAYS sounded rubbish, with one exception of KISS FM until that got a lower quality and is now worse than AM radio.
It should have been put between 68-88MHz too, a very unused band, but with a really good coverage, especially mobile, compared to up around 200MHz.
Badly thought out, terrible audio quality and do you remember that stupid advertising company that did radio and car adverts aimed at "old" people? They put a nice new modern radio in an old case to try and appeal to pensioners, or people with certain conditions that only remembered older style radios, then tried similar with cars - completely bizarre.
DAB is a waste of time, I would prefer AM radio quality in the car.
i wondered if the transmitter was put there to be able to give the spirits the wifi for the internet haha, great information and video, really enjoyed it.
That's absolutely awesome, and another great video. Here's hoping that it gets new use. Not reusing the AM bands would be a terrible waste of the radio spectrum. And also, it would be a real shame not to be able to use old radios.
I've picked up talksport in the south of France over the years, barely audible but it's there
Thank you Lewis. This is excellent. As an enthusiastic medium wave / AM DXer in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, I am sad to see these famous transmitter sites close and for AM transmissions to disappear. However, there really is no strong reason to keep them on the air when so few people actually listen to them, or need them. There are so many alternatives available, superior FM in some cases, but usually DAB and online apps and some via Freeview and Satellite. Even in my entusiastic days of AM DXing, my day to day radio listening was almost exclusively on FM. AM was such bad quality then - it's even worse nowadays due to to proliferation of RF interference from switch mode power supplies and broadband over mains wiring adapters to name just two problems. I am surprised that anyone tunes in to AM. I can still enjoy a bit of DXing here in the Midlands - e.g. Radio Caroline on 648. It's not quite the same as tuning in, those decades ago, to Moray Firth Radio, North Sound, West Sound, Isle of Wight Radio, Devon Air and Radio Cornwall in the Midlands, but times change, so we move on - and we save a lot of wasted electricity! Thanks for a great video.
Great video Lewis. I think , it's brilliant that Radio Caroline still broadcasts ( now legally) on 648 KHz AM (solar powered transmitter) the irony being that it's on an ex BBC site,
Sadly it's really difficult to receive in the North of England, however there's an excellent app available, and they have an increasing DAB service,
However for someone who's been listening to Caroline for 60 years (this month) there's nothing like AM.
In the 60's living in South Wales at the time, I used to take my Mum's lovely Bush radio down to the pebble beach at Barry, where with a 20ft tank aerial we would get fantastic reception on 259M from Caroline South from the Mi Amigo anchored off Frinton, happy days!
Nice video as always! In Brazil, most people still have those gigantic C-band dishes to get free channels from the Star One C2 satellite. Would love to hear you talking abou that!
Thanks RM. A very Interesting Video***
Nice video of the tower (and the plane there, of course) The best to you Lewis from LB1NH 🙂
Thnks for the update.
Totally agree. Medium wave is quite dead here in Devon. In the day time is Radio 5 from Exeter and Start Point, Radio Wales from Wenvoe, Talk Sport from Washford perhaps BBC Channel Islands if the wind is right. At night loads of repeats of Spanish and other foreign ones and Manx from the Isle of Man. Before we had Radio Devon and Gold. Of course Radio 4 on long wave and some French station from Algeria before we had RTE 1. The medium wave could be used for something before the transmitters get torn down
I'm on Prince Edward Island in Canada and had 2 a.m. English and 2 French stations run by CBC but before I moved here in 2012 all were taken off line and replaced by f.m. stations.
Brillent thank you . good point AM gone . what a shame thanks good work and info
While watching this video I really wondered about how close it is to residential housing. I don't know how old the houses are but I really wonder whether the houses or the mast were first, and how people in those houses worked with a powerful transmitter nearby.
I have read stories of AM transmitters coming through on anything electronic, with people in new houses relatively close to transmitters wanting those transmitters switched off.
I would also suspect the radials end close to the houses (and the cemetery).
Anyway, I appreciate the videos of transmitters!
like the shot of the vehicle ferry boat, since this is on the Mersey river, it brings to mind one of my favourite pop oldies, "Ferry Cross The Mersey".
I remember when Radio Merseyside was also on Redefusion Channel C. How things change!
Thanks for sharing with us this channel is great so much great information can you have a look at the Stockandchurch mast in Buckinghamshire please
The crow didn't like the spikes there. 😮
I can't remember for any time since 1985 that i've been listening to anything else than stuttering in the AM-band, here in Denmark. It really - from my PoV - seems that AM never hit any stronghold here in Denmark. FM on the other hand is huge.. and loaded with stations. That also gave a reason for DAB and eventually DAB+.
I'm not a professional DXer but i'm not aware of any stations on AM since....... well... my grandfathers radio that told me BBC was on some kind of frequency on the AM-band at long time ago...
Nope, not AM for us here in Denmark.
I frequently drive past the Occombe transmitter site in Torbay. That's been defunct since Absolute closed it down but it's still there. I wonder for how much longer its in a prime location for development.
You should have gone down the M53 to Clatterbridge Hospital. They have a very small licenced 1602KHz AM hospital radio transmitter. It's a box in the car park and a small loaded pole antenna of about 30ft on a post! It does the job across the site and sound quality is really good. It was at the car park were the injections were being given a few years ago...can't remember the name of the building itself.
Hi Lewis, Thank you for another excellent and informative video. Could you, one day, cover the history of the original Radio City AM site at Rainford, and its successor at Bebington. A feature on the Allerton Park local VHF site would be great too! Thanks again, Mike.
A transmitter to the afterlife?!?!
I bet they broadcast a lot of _dead air._ 😉
Proof that 5G is fatal . . . . .
Maybe they broadcast the graveyard shift.
YT ate my 5G comment but it still shows up in my activity. Strange, YT lets flat earth comments go through.
@@paulsengupta971 Donald Fagen , The Nightfly I.G.Y. New Frontier
Greetings Ringway Manchester from Australia, I discovered your channel a few months back and have been enjoy watching your videos keep up the good work.
I’m afraid the AM MW broadcast band is a slowly dying medium. Here in Australia the ACMA are providing the legacy AM broadcasters the ability to move to the FM broadcast band and cease operating on AM handing the license in once the conversion is complete, I feel this is over crowding the FM band especially in metro capital city markets. I understand that AM broadcasting is more expensive to transmit on, is more acceptable to interference but I feel it still has a place in today’s broadcasting landscape. AM is perfect for talkback, news and sports, AM also travels further than FM especially in Australia with our landscape. AM has proven itself in disastrous times over FM. Here the licenses on the AM band range from 250 watts to 50KW services, compiling of the national broadcaster the ABC, commercial and HPON licenses. It’s a pity that AM Stereo didn’t take off, the C-QUAM system sounded very comparable to FM if you knew how to get the sweat sound out of the audio processing.
It will be a sad day indeed to see AM no longer, it was sad when they turned off the ABC SW services. I will miss scanning the bands for distance stations to receive, you can’t get that satisfaction from FM.
It's getting stranger and stranger.😏
I once went to a hair salon in a defunct radio studio, complete with the radio tower still there, even though they were no longer using the tower (obviously) the red beacon at the top still shined brightly. The weirdest thing, people getting their hair cut with an AM tower just out the window. 😊
Hello from Riverside, Ca USA ❤
Why was the medium wave no longer at night announcement in an American accent?
A voiceover guy called John Wells who did all of Radio 1's branding in the 90's.
@@philhoultby interesting. Thanks. I never knew
I grew up with am radio, now here in the states its talk or public service imformation such as traffic hazards, i do miss the days of listening to a hand held am radio or the old tube based am radio my grandmother gave me, and listing to far away am stations whem the ionisphere shifted at night.
Us Ham radio operators ham a fondness for AM radio and don't want to see it disappear but sadly that's not shared by the wider public anymore and simply nobody would listen to any station broadcast on them today unfortunately.
It's a way of life soon to be consigned to memory in the UK. I'm glad I lived through it and we have some archive footage like this to show us how it all operated.
AM isn't what it once was here in the US, but it still has a place in some very remote areas...
Beautifully constructed...... 👍
Hi Lewis totally agree it's disgusting what they are doing to the AM bard the only thing we can get now is Radio Caroline
Lol "they" aren't doing anything. It's simply not worth it.
Awesome video
I particularly liked this one for some reason.. the old wood walls within slightly less old wood walls... within newer brick walls.. i hope they just keep adding new tech walls around the outsides of these.
AM in the US now is dying as many rural areas shutting down & going to low power FM translators clogging up the FM band. Soon FM in the US will expand down to 82.1 - 107.9 MHz but no dates set yet as we still use 87.7 - 107.9 MHz currently. -Cheers!
Interesting as always.
I thought Wallasey VOR may have been on site too then I google mapped the VOR and its a few miles down the road
What an amazing shot at 3:22 ! ✈️🗼
the problem is with AM broadcast transmitters, is the expense to run them! however, i agree.. they would make ideal local and reigonal startup station sites, before long we will have no AM long wave or medium wave left!
Sadly the golden age of HF radio ended in the 90's (or abouts), I know that was certainly the beginning of the end for military HF comms with the transition to satellites and such.
You get internet starlight dishes like those usually two coax cables one for TX other for RX
One of those smaller sat dishes is probably a telemetry link.
this is brilliant and in my neck of the woods , enjoyed this thumbs up
I know in Holland there's a lot of low power AM stations which are run by persons passionate with the technology, they even build their own masts in the backyard. Just chose one KiwiSDR in Holland and pick a station to listen to.
That dig at the maintenance crew or lack thereof was savage 😂👍
Obviously I’m assuming there would be a lot of factors that would make it impractical however it would be nice to see the AM frequencies handed over to county councils to be licensed locally.
Great video ❤😎
Thanks 😁
The loss of AM world wide is tragic in my opinion. I am still to fine a FM station (with out the use of internet) that transmits from the UK tothe US
The hobby of finding C-QuAM stereo transmitters is even harder these days.
I still listen to AM radio 90% of the time . The bureaucrats must get in touch with the real world. I love AM and all its characteristics.
Hi Lewis I live in stowmarket in Suffolk quite near to the mendlesham mast I was wondering it you have any history about the mast and what was it is transmitted from there thank you for your great channel very interesting
2:00 From my understanding, it is not possible to add lightning protection to the top of a live mast as running a grounded conductor up the mast would affect performance. My guess is that the top section is for tuning.
That's quite possible, but they do lightning protection using a spark gap for these "live" towers. If the charge builds up sufficiently, it'll spark across the gap.
@@paulsengupta971 Yes, they typically have a "ball gap" (yes it really is called that) at the base of the mast.
Another interesting one that you might see on taller masts is an open framed transformer which is sometimes used to feed the red aeronautics mast top warning lamp.
Ringway Manchester, can you do the Winter Hill Transmitter in the Pennines?
I feel sad about the closure of AM transmitters worldwide. In my town here in Brazil, we used to have many AM stations to listen to, some were sports, some religious, some musical and so on. At night we could easily hear stations from very far away. Today there's only one transmitter working at 12KW (Rádio São Francisco AM 870KHz).
a.m. is also disappearing over here in the States as well. A lot of talk radio stations have migrated over to FM but as far as the transmitters are concerned for the UK I'm really surprised that they would not keep them viable as a secondary means of communication during an emergency. or even shortwave communication.
In the US there are talks about passing laws to require car manufacturers to include AM capabilities (mostly because AM radio is important for emergencies due to how large an area a single high-power transmitter can cover)
@@jfwfreo And the QRM the inverters in the cars produce converting D.C. to the A.C. needed for the motor(s) in the car.
Nobody owns a radio that can receive it.
seriously- even KNX has changed into "KNX News 97.1" and they don't even mention the AM 1070 channel any more. (i though they would have to station id the 1070khz am but i listened for over an hour on am1070 and i never heard it happen. Maybe the rules have changed since they added that digital id thing back whenever)
@@jfwfreo I really hope they do.... If for anything emergency situations
It seems that radio here in the states are heading in that same direction. Alpha Media laid off it's staff at it's Missouri stations, including KWIX 1230 and KRES 104.7FM. KWIX and KRES were both renowned for their news and sports coverage over the years but both stations were best known for their severe weather coverage that surpassed even the TV stations as the radio stations had their own radar system. They were a prominent fixture in the community until Alpha's layoff. Now it's all AI, and the studios are empty of people. It's only a matter of time before both stations are gone, and by then no one will notice that they were switched off.
8:48 Maybe I am not getting it right, but a question comes to my mind: Were there many different frequencies transmitted simultaneously from this mast, like BBC Radio Merseyside on 1485 kHz, Talksport on 1107 kHz and Absolute Radio on 1197 kHz ? Usually a mast radiator like this one has to be tuned with a coil or capacitative "hat" to the transmitted frequency in order to keep the SWR within acceptable limit.
I remember being given the sticker kit to stick on the band dial on our radio at home when I was a small boy.
There is no way I would like to have lived that close to a MW transmitter at those sort of power levels.
If you had gone a mile or two to Moreton before Wallasey Village train station, you could have had a look at the aircraft locator antenna which looks like a huge doughnut with lots of small aerials. That's always an interesting one.
Our AM station is still going but I don't think the FCC is licensing new ones. They recently let us buy up existing Low Power FM licenses usually only available to nonprofits to rebroadcast our AM on FM. Ours are both 1KW during the day and have a similar footprint as much as I can tell with maybe a slight nod to the FM. The AM goes down to 56 watts at night but the FM of course is allowed to stay full power 24/7. I do not know when the FCC will finally sunset the band but I suspect it won't be long and the LPFM buyout was to entice us over and those with older AM transmitters will probably be happy to do so for the more efficient FM they bought. Soon as the cell companies find use for the AM band it will go to them like the rest of the spectrum. That's just my opinion.
Can you do stuff about HAM radio? Alot of us enjoy your content.
How many "graveyard" frequencies are on AM in Region 1? All I recall is 1484/1485. Here in the U.S., the "graveyard" is 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450, and 1490. Everything is 1 KW non-directional. Used to require cutback to 250 watts at night... This is probably the most appropriate graveyarder I've ever seen! 73!
AM is still alive and well here in the states, although some car manufacturers are trying to do away with AM radios in their new vehicles. Luckily, that has drawn a lot of blowback, and some manufacturers are rethinking that decision.
I once received an objection from the owners of a graveyard in Australia - they said that the GSM tower we had erected to the east corner of their graveyard had resulted in loss of business because it created the wrong Feng shui for the graveyard and members of the Asian community would not have their loved ones buried there.
Where does Mersey pilotage and marine services transmit/receive from?
first video asking for a video of the Fenton transmitter mast please and thank you
Interesting place to house an AM transmitter. It's a shame that AM services are being/have been closed down, as they provide choice for people who don't yet have DAB or easy access to streaming services - think in older cars, for example, which are often CD/FM/AM only, so with AM being closed down and FM having not a lot of choice in some areas, it's not ideal.
Last time I used AM was on a holiday last year (or the year before), just before Smooth Norfolk shut down.
It's a shame they don't allow people to either buy the masts of these old AM transmitters, or allow them to be used for something else.
what drone do you use lewis
AM is dying here in the States. I still use my AM radio along with the short-wave. AM like analog TV has a higher fault tolerance; just think super solar storm (Arouras at the equator type) and watch how quick digital fails.
it sucks the uk is losing am radio im glad america still uses it but for a good reason due to how vast we are as a country so digital and fm cant be dooable at all for us this is why america still has am radio i also listened to some radio stations that played music on am as well
Does anyone know why it took do long for Radio 1 to eventually get on to FM? Always found it weird that a station playing content that relied on high fidelity audio was stuck on the fuzzy frequencies.
I agree that there's still a place for AM radio. In the USA, AM is suffering the same fate with some automakers threatening to remove AM reception capability from new cars. Not good!
Unfortunately the cost of power alone is enough to prevent any community radio service utilising any old MW site!
The Magic 1548 TX at Bromborough snapped a guy and it had to be powered down and repaired at a cost of more than £16000. I can't see many small scale community services being able to budget for maintenance.
In the United States AM radio was saved in the late eighties/early nineties by one man. The talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who has sadly since passed away. Even though there is still broadcasting on AM. I think AM is eventually going to go back to where it was in the late 70's/80's. Pretty much forgotten in the US. Without something worth listing to, it's fate is sealed.
Right. We need another enigmatic host, but Rush is not easy to replace.
@@spacemissing Rush was a man of his time, there is no way to replace him. I don't think anybody should try. Things will always be changing, but in radio's highly corporatized environment. Anyone showing any true individuality, will not get very far. I think the same other areas area of media as well.
Have you visited Woofferton to look at their DRM transmitters?
I have several times recently. Stay tuned
the overtone series on your opening is particularly nice and sounds a lot like Richard Strauss