Following many, many hours of extensive signal propagation and antenna modelling work with Rash from digris, (which we’ve just completed at 2.30am!), in which we have been looking to ascertain the best transmission site for SS-DAB coverage across Basingstoke, we are very pleased to have shortlisted a couple of potentially suitable sites.
Basingstoke, it turns out, is an extremely difficult town to cover from a single transmission site, due to land ridges in the terrain which, according to our propagation modelling, blocks the DAB signal across over half of the town. Sadly, we do not have the means to afford a second set of equipment to install at a second site, let alone additional landlord fees, etc that would be incurred, (this is called small-scale DAB for a reason!!!), so we are working hard to locate a suitable single site which can provide us the coverage we seek
We will be approaching the prospective landlords regarding the shortlisted sites in the New Year, but this does put us in a very hopeful position.
We’all also be using the quiet Christmas period to work on the technical plans for submission to Ofcom, in the hope that all things will fall into place during 2024.
Fingers crossed, we can then move quickly in our endeavours to re-launch SS-DAB radio services to Basingstoke in as short time-frame as possible.