O/T Radio 5 Live and TalkSport. Why on Medium Wave Only ???

[Seasider9601]

Frustrates the hell out of me this day in age to have these 2 great Radio stations available on Medium Wave only !

I tend to listen to them in the car a lot, but the reception drives me insane sometimes dependant on the area I am driving in ! The signal is also worse when I am charging up my phone through the in car charger jobby via the cigarette lighter.

Why oh why are these both on Medium Wave only ??!!!! I'm not technically knowledgable that way, but there must be a reason why they're not on FM still ??

[marky No.1]

The BBC have got radios 1 to 4 on fm which you can follow countrywide. They are not licensed to just get another as and when. It would seem they would have to drop one of the other stations to transmit sport. They have tried with DAB, internet and freeview which is great BUT as you say its in the car where we suffer

On an away bus trip recently the driver actually asked me if I had a spare metal coathanger to try an improve things

As you travel through county to county the FM frequencies overlap and there just doesn't seem to be enough space on the dial

[Seasider9601]

Thanks for that Marky. Never gave a thought about the overlapping FM frequencies !

New company car due in April ..... have to be DAB enabled I think !! (Yeah right, I wish ....)

[outsider]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PURE-Highway-In-C ... 1e5b45b3b7


One way around it, but It does my head in as well

[Seasider9601]

Now THAT'S a good bit of kit !!

Cheers Outsider ! All the best to you.

[SkinnyShrimp]

Not as good as it sounds! - I've had one for over 12 months and whilst on normal MW you often get dodgy reception - with this is either perfect or.........nothing - doesn't work in the Lakes and seems to have blackspots around the country - I live in Nottingham and on one side of town its great and on the other it keeps cutting out for a few seconds before coming back in - very frustrating!
Also the magnetic holder pretty much disintergrated after 6 months - not worth the money in my opinion - but the Pure evoke I have at home is great and works a treat.

[outsider]

Thanks for that "SkinnyShrimp" was thinking of getting one myself, but might just stick to my personal dab radio, till I can get a proper digi one fitted in the car

[marky No.1]

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stor ... Car+Radios

[The Bay]

Anorak alert....anorak alert....

The simple answer is there's no space on the FM waveband.

Also, a latively low powered medium wave signal goes a long way (far further than an FM one at same power), so is far easier to cover the whole country (for example Talksport only has two frequencies but radio 1 has about a dozen, depending where you live).

However MW is far more liable to interference from a number of elements - the main one, bizarrely, being the dark (which is a problem in winter especially). MW goes futher in the dark and when it's cloudy, and that's why the reception is often poor - it's being interfered with by stations from overseas (France, Holland, Scandanavia etc).

Far more too it of course - hills, electrical currents all also interfere, but that's the main reason reception is often poor on MW - the weather and time of day!

See you tomorrow!

Dave.

[marky No.1]

...... and what do you know about radio?