A DRM test transmission of The Disco Palace will take place from the RNW Bonaire relay station on Monday 8 March. The parameters are as follows:
- Time: 1300-1825 UTC
- Frequency: 15745 kHz
- Power: 100 kW DRM
- Antenna azimuth: 80 degrees
- Target area: Europe
Related story:
on Mar 9th, 2010 at 14:39
The Disco Palace also heard on 15760 kHz in AM (not DRM) on 8 March.
First heard at 1540 UT and still audible at 1725 UT. Mainly continuous disco music but jingle and ID’s heard at top of hour. Some breaks in audio so obviously testing. DRM hash also on 15745, presumably same station?
Fair signal strength on mainly clear channel (though some co-channel faint talk noticeable here in gap in music - maybe Kol Israel?).
Alan Pennington, Caversham, UK
AOR 7030+ / longwire
on Mar 10th, 2010 at 15:29
why is RNW going back for DRM for test purposes of other broadcasters? I thought it had abandoned DRM SW transmission to Europe?
on Mar 11th, 2010 at 13:13
I asked our Programme Distribution Department for an explanation, and this is what they say:
1. For the first time we tested the complete audio transmission chain developed for DRM. Which means a DRM content server in the studio and a MDI stream via IP into the DRM modulator of the Thomson transmitters in Bonaire. In the case of Bonaire this has not been tested before and TDP was able to set up this MDI stream for RNW.
2. RNW choose to transmit to Europe during office hours between 1300-1830 UTC. This way we could analyse the MDI stream and overall performance of the DRM signal during a long period.
3. In principle the analogue transmission next to the DRM signal had nothing to do with the DRM transmission. However, this was necessary to test the power generators on full load after maintenance. The 3rd Tx was “on air” on the dummy load.