Narrowband Radios

General questions on scanning from 30 to 3000Mhz. Not sure what you can receive in your area? Here's the place to ask!

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Nosferatu
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Narrowband Radios

Post by Nosferatu »

Hello All,

Just a few questions on the Narrowband Radios such as Thu Nguyen, Radio Lollipop and Hellenic Radio :

Why do these people bother to broadcast on the band that not many people have access to ?
What I mean is that, common AM/FM Radios cannot listen to these broadcasts. Not even the Shortwave (World band) radio can do it either.

Can you actually buy a special radio to listen to these broadcast other than a scanner ?

Who actually listen to them ? I supposed they are not for general public ?

Can someone educate me on this please :)

Thank's
spartacus
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Re: Narrowband Radios

Post by spartacus »

This may be semi relevant but I was visiting a house with some rather elderly owners about 3 or 4 years ago. They had one of those old style FM radios. However, on their radio, the scale went from the usual 88MHz to around 180. Sorry, but I can't remember the exact value, but it was definantly about the air band.
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Nosferatu
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Re: Narrowband Radios

Post by Nosferatu »

@Spartacus : :-k Wow, that's really interesting ! So the old radio has more frequency coverage then the modern one. May be something to do with the sound quality ? Or may be they cannot do the FM Stereo with Narrowband ? I have to reasearch on that. :smt017 Thank's anyway for the post.
westernwedgey
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Re: Narrowband Radios

Post by westernwedgey »

Think Radio Lollipop is the hospital based radio station at PMH for the kids to listen to while in their beds on the wards and some treatment areas, they can even get involved in the broadcasting.
VK6LD
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Re: Narrowband Radios

Post by VK6LD »

Nosferatu wrote:Just a few questions on the Narrowband Radios such as Thu Nguyen, Radio Lollipop and Hellenic Radio :

Why do these people bother to broadcast on the band that not many people have access to ?
What I mean is that, common AM/FM Radios cannot listen to these broadcasts. Not even the Shortwave (World band) radio can do it either.

Can you actually buy a special radio to listen to these broadcast other than a scanner ?

Who actually listen to them ? I supposed they are not for general public ?

Can someone educate me on this please :)
Licence fees is probably one explanation. A couple of hundred bucks for a narrowband broadcast licence as opposed to many thousands and in some cases millions of dollars for a full FM broadcast licence.

Cheers.
Nosferatu
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Re: Narrowband Radios

Post by Nosferatu »

Recently I ask someone in a Facebook Narrowband discussion group about what sort of receiver they are using for this kind of broadcast and they said that the narrowband subscribers use special custom made receivers that are fixed to the broadcast frequency and cannot be changed to any other frequencies. Interesting :)
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