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.
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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort#:~:text...
_whiteCaps_•1h ago
mschuster91•1h ago
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
reaperducer•44m ago
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.
BuildTheRobots•6m ago
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.
yakkers•7m ago
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.