New Longwave TX from October 2024 in Finland.

[Mike Watterson]

On 252 kHz.

Not much risk of RTE interference, because they demolished the masts after transmission ended.

Algeria is on 252 kHz, so reception is more likely in Northern UK than southern England.

https://arcticradio.net/

[ppppenguin]

You have to ask why? In a world with ever smaller numbers of LW receivers and the general decline of both MW and LW what's the point. What is it useful for?

Won't be too long before they could have 198kHz as a clear channel.

[Mike Watterson]

Satellite reception is poor to impossible at very northern places. It's not portable.

VHF-FM needs a lot of transmitters and DAB even more for a large area.

LW gives best coverage with a single transmitter over a large area. The 252 kHz is allocated already to Finland.. They can't use a different frequency without ITU reallocation (now part of UN, but strangely not responsible for Internet IP ranges or TLDs).

The cessation of AM in Europe is driven by accountants, not Public Service or consideration of emergency service as independent generators easier to maintain for a few high power stations than hundreds of VHF-FM or DAB. DAB replacing FM is political to benefit national stations with multiple channels per mux and ideally SFN and in many cases coverage is poorer than VHF-FM. In reality some broadcasters want to cease broadcast entirely and have streaming, which tells them exactly what is listened to and gives more control. They also mistakenly think it's cheaper. But IP (streaming) is only cheaper for niche content, scales badly at peak times and has less coverage than DAB. It's also about zero resilience in a disaster and costs the consumer most.

AM & FM is the cheapest reception for consumers and works for months on a set of batteries.

DAB closed in Ireland after reaching only about 45% coverage because only RTE wanted it and they are impoverished from paying presenters. The RTE 1 252 KHz running cost was only about 1.5% of Presenter costs (really!). RTE got RTENL (now 2RN) to demolish MW (Cork, Dublin & Athone) masts and then LW mast (Summervill/Trim ) pretty quickly to make it more difficult to reverse the closures.

AM/FM sets are mostly for USA market, hence no LW. But new sets with LW do exist.

[Murphyv310]

It's only 1Kw.
Very much unlikely to be received here in Ayrshire, Algeria will have it for breakfast.

[Mike Watterson]

I wonder what size of aerial? At VHF or UHF we are used to ERP being higher than the drive power, but at LW 1 kW could be only 1 W ERP on an HF sized aerial.

I missed the power used. Obviously they lack funding.

You might null out Algeria, but even on a clear channel 1W would need a massive aerial at 252 kHz.as a 1/4 wave is nearly 1.2 km!

[Kalee20]

...even on a clear channel 1W would need a massive aerial at 252 kHz.as a 1/4 wave is nearly 1.2 km!

Erm... I make 1/4 wave at 252kHz equal to 298m, a lot different to 1.2km!

Even a half-wave dipole would still be only 596m total... impractical for most of us but not quite so much as you make out!

[Murphyv310]

Even a relatively short Beverage should work but the signal strength from Algeria will of course be the main issue.

[Mike Watterson]

Maybe I forgot to divide by 4?

[Mike Watterson]

Even a relatively short Beverage should work but the signal strength from Algeria will of course be the main issue.

Receive aerial efficiency doesn't matter. A loop will work well and my 22m long wire has picked up Polish LW in the past. But transmitting on LW I might only get 1 or 2W ERP with 1kW of drive. My short VHF whip on the car gives perfect R4 LW
here. It's far shorter than 75cm, being partly helical, but better than the shark fin or bee sting aerials on newer cars.

Sorry for being confusing.