Postscript: The redirect loop is gone and all the Absolute Radio AM transmitters are off as of January 26.
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Absolute UK Shutting down AM
- Thread starter SomeRadioGuy
- Start date
From the UK side, some DXers are reporting being able to hear WPHT on 1210 for the first time now that the high-power transmitters on 1215 are gone. What a treat for the listener!
I briefly checked out the University of Twente SDR and I caught a strong signal with an unidentified pop song, with Spain underneath.
Per MWList, there aren't a lot of choices left on 1215, though pirates are a possibility
What I do know is that the R&B station could also be picked up via KiwiSDRs in Essex, England and in France near Luxembourg.
The 2022 WRTH has the COPE synchros on 1215, then the next closest stations are in Saudi Arabia. Pirate activity wouldn’t surprise me.
Nothing heard on 1215 at a check around 1500 UT on the UTwente receiver; too early for Spain to make it.
That would indicate it not being a pirate.
But given its programming, it's highly unlikely to be Saudi Arabia. So what is it?
That's what I intend to find out tonight. I'll give it a longer listen then.
Okay, I have just spent 45 minutes listening to what I'm calling "R&B 1215" via a KiwiSDR in Germany, and it has been playing one song after another without a single interruption, not even for station ID. I had not heard any of the songs before, so the station appears to specialize in lesser-known R&B songs.
It did just play The Pretenders "Don't Get Me Wrong".
I wonder what the rules are for station identification in various European countries.
Good question since it seems I've never heard, or heard of anything but network IDs. Individual station IDs never seemed to be a thing, and call letters are almost unheard of.
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they donjt have call letters in the UK
Nobody in Europe uses call letters - I'm pretty sure they aren't even assigned to broadcast stations, even for administrative use. Ham radio operators do have calls.
If you receive a European network station, it's impossible to determine which individual transmitter you're receiving - for instance, all transmitters of BBC Radio 1 broadcast an identical service with zero splits, not even for IDs. It's slightly annoying for DXers, but you can generally figure out what signal you're picking up by using basic geographic and RF logic on a list of what transmitter is on which frequency.
In any case, given these figures, FM radio is starting to become slightly outmoded, never mind AM. Even DAB is in a slow decline, with the inexorable rise of the app, stream and smart speaker.
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But how about a station like our mystery station, that sends out song after song with no announcements, no jingles, nothing between them, not even at the top of the hour? What country allows broadcasters to transmit a continuous stream of music without an identification of station, network or anything else?
It sounds like a pirate. There have been a few reports of a pirate from Italy - which has somewhat lax radio regulation and very little enforcement against pirates at the best of times - having jumped onto 1215 now that it has been vacated by Absolute.
Plenty of small AM pirates around Europe - Italy and Greece are hotspots, but there are also a few in Ireland, the UK and even the Netherlands, despite the latter's move to legalized LPAM.
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