[BoxOfRain]

> Hell, even the BBC in the UK is closing down local AM transmitters on cost grounds (but I suspect there is political pressure to move the masses to digital UHF infrastructure).

Yeah in a couple of years it'll just be Radio Caroline and various small-time pirates on AM. Even the venerable longwave transmitter for Radio 4 is getting shut down in a couple of months sadly.

Can't help feeling this is all a bit short-sighted, it's not like you can do anything else with those bands and if things go sideways it's a reliable way to reach a lot of people without power. Personally if we can't keep our medium and long wave transmitters on economic grounds I think those bands should be opened to unlicensed hobbyists, it'd be an excellent technical and artistic opportunity that would allow for actual broadcasting rather than just two-way communication. I doubt there'd be a huge issue with interference as few people have the room to put up a 150' quarter wave, and if copyrights were a material issue rights holders would have gone after public SDRs capturing the broadcast bands years ago.

[digitalsankhara]

Totally agree. Thought about this myself, as a way of having true community radio. A simple hobby broadcast license of low cost might be pooled to cover copyright music only to prevent the types raids of seen on pirate stations (leaving aside what politics can be read into that enforcement). Maybe that would not be such an issue these days, but anyway, there is a lot of Creative Commons content out there.

I love listening to the North Sea pirates on medium wave. So diverse and ecletic!

[hilbert42]

"I love listening to the North Sea pirates on medium wave. So diverse and ecletic!"

I lived on the other side of the planet the 1960s when Radio Caroline began transmission so I was deprived of the somewhat 'illicit' fun of listening to it.

Instead I'd come home from school turn on my shortwave radio and witness Radio Moscow and Radio Peking battling it out for the position of which could produce the most outrageous and over-the-top propaganda. It was hilarious, even this naïve school kid wasn't taken in by any of it.

That was at the height of the Cold War (Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.) and especially Radio Moscow could be heard splattered all over the dial—it seemed that no matter where one tuned, it came in at strength 5/9+, its signal was enormous.

I'd love to hear some recording of those broadcasts again and I reckon I'd still be amused (I've not searched but I'd bet there are recording of them in archives somewhere).

[digitalsankhara]

It's interesting that today Radio China International is everywhere on shortwave.

[hilbert42]

"…it'll just be Radio Caroline and various small-time pirates on AM. Even the venerable longwave transmitter for Radio 4 is getting shut down in a couple of months sadly."

Even with this shortsighted decision, the size of the UK is such that FM and digital services can provide adequate coverage. But that's not the case for large countries like the US, Canada, Australia, etc. VHF services major population centres with comparative ease but it's essentially impossible for it to do so for vast sparsely-populated areas. This is where LF, MF and HF are effective.

Years ago I recall traveling by car from Sydney to Adelaide (Australia) which is about 1000 miles and the shortest route is to travel diagonally across the country (the longer way would be to travel the coastline where the population is larger and take in cities such as Melbourne).

Traveling cross-country meant going across sparsely-populated areas where local broadcast services were either nonexistent or very patchy (low power—just enough to service a small community). Nevertheless, that proved no problem as the ABC's (the Oz version of the BBC) capital city AM transmitters located in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide provided coverage all the way. Even though Melbourne wasn't on route at points along the way its transmitter was stronger than the other two. (I'd note that was the daytime coverage from all three transmitters sans skip.)

It would be impossible to provide that coverage with only three VHF transmittes no matter their power. Frankly, it'd be crazy to switch off AM transmissions in a country like Australia even if one discounted their strategic advantage.