[cma-l] CRonAM

[RJ THORNE]

There may well be life in the old dog yet but after our experience with  Forest of Dean Radio I never want to be on AM again. Throughout the life of the station we constantly got complaints about the quality of the signal and spent thousands looking for ways to improve it. Even with two frequencies and two transmitters (one of which had 250 watts) there were whole areas of the Forest where the signal was either too poor to listen to comfortably or didn't exist at all, especially at night.(We did get picked up in Sweden though).

I'm not a technical bod and didn't understand many of the discussions and suggestions made except that most of them cost way more than we could afford, still didn't offer too much and certainly couldn't guarantee we'd get what we needed. The geography and geology of the Forest were major factors it seems, as were the hundreds of thousands of trees. 

Personally I'm convinced the way forward for those who can't get FM is to go digital in whatever form becomes universally available.



From: fantasy office <office at fantasyradio.co.uk>
To: cma-l at mailman.commedia.org.uk 
Sent: Thursday, 25 September 2014, 12:33
Subject: [cma-l] CRonAM
 



it's true to say AM is not considered very sexy these days, but
    there's life in the old dog yet.

Our first RSL broadcasts were on AM back in 1995, using a
    transmitter of my own design, and we had good daytime reception over
    a wide area, with none of the black spots you often get on low power
    FM! The antenna design is vital for AM, but we were on 1 watt EMRP
    and we had listeners as far away as Sweden and Germany. It's worth
    remembering that there are far fewer stations on AM these days,
    causing less interference, so for community broadcasting, AM could
    be very worthwhile. especially when backed up by a good quality
    stream.

If anyone would like more info on AM, feel free to get in touch.


Phil Dawson

  FANTASY RADIO 97FM 
DEVIZES AND MID WILTSHIRE

office at fantasyradio.co.uk
07710 027389 
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