Went up to Crescent Head Lookout today. Had the Lismore ABCs and Triple Z picked by the auto seek tuning on the car radio. Also FM104.7 Grafton seeked in too - which was also received on the Pacific Highway around Kempsey. Armidale ABCs also detected on the seek tuning at the lookout, but 100.3 seemed to be 2RE Forster and 104 3 was SKY Armidale but faint. 2HC Woolgoola on 100.5 too.
Faint Newcastle stations received there too.
Went up to North Brother, certainly a great spot to visit.
Some great results up there, but perhaps not as strong as I was expecting in some cases. Best results were:
Mt Moombil Coffs ABCs 91.5, 97.9, 99 5 58db. I thought that was pretty impressive at a distance of 149km.
On the car radio got SBS 97.7 Sydney with RDS (when other Sydney stations could barely be heard).
Weak 97.3 FM Brisbane. Could hear modern Hot AC music, signal wasnāt very stable though.
The ones that werenāt as strong as I expected were:
Hit 102.3 and 100.7 MMM = 48db. Good but not great. Even Yarrahpinnini 105.1 and 106.7 were 48db, only 10kw and were further away.
Middle Brother ABCs = 61db. This was st the south facing lookout with a clear view of the TX.
At a distance of just 11km, I was thinking my record of 71db might be under threat.
Lismore ABCs could only just be heard. No ZZZ.
Some Newcastle stations could be received on the car radio with RDS, but couldnāt be detected on the Tecsun at the south facing lookout. Weird.
Taree commercial and community stations couldnāt do any better than 28-29db at the south facing lookout.
Views
North
South - you can just see the Middle Brother TX towards the top right.
Again great views. Interesting might be the only place in NSW you can hear Brissy and Sydney at the same time on FM. I am surprised ABC Illawarra wouldnāt be fighting on 97.3 FM.
Boambee Headland that @Mechsta frequents could be another candidate for semi regular Brisbane and Sydney FM reception at the same time.
As is Woolgoolga Headland just to the north; you can do one better with Hot 91.1 receivable there a lot of the time as well as Sydney during tropo.
just out of curiosity, has anyone else noticed when DXing whilst driving, you notice that some cars pass by, emit a huge amount of interference? Strong enough hash to jam most DX signals. I notice this a lot when driving on the hwy
Canāt say Iāve noticed it with cars, but trucks yes, more so on AM than FM, sometimes itās even strong enough to interfere with local AM stations, the latter I notice on buses as well, & itās usually from the LED light globes they have on them for tail/sidelights etc.
Iāve only noticed it on FM. A strong hash noise
Yes, & some of the LED traffic lights do it too.
I have noticed that some vehicles spew an inordinate amount of RF garbage. Of the many interference sources one encounters while on the road, petrol stations are by far the worst in my experience.
The LED bulbs are spurious emitters both on vehicles as mentioned, petrol stations, billboards and traffic signals.
ACMA needs to step up and stop this.
EMC (Electromagnetic Compatability) compliance & enforcement of standards on electronic products, goods, components etc is all but non-existent in this country. When standards were implemented decades ago the priority was on manufacturers & consumers in terms of low price for the consumer. Australia is a dumping ground for RF noisy crap electronic goods & items Iām sorry to say.
I doubt ACMA has the will or the numbers of staff for enforcement.
The mentality decades ago of the people responsible for creating the AUS/NZ EMC standards (and ACMA was involved) was that noisy broadcast mediums like MW (AM) & shortwave were old technologies & considered of less or no importance re concerns of RF interference to these parts of RF spectrum. Sad but trueā¦
Yes can happen up there too. I have a large new white goods product from a Korean manufacturer that emits horrendous wide spectrum VHF noise multiple times an hour. Wipes out all but the strong locals. ACMA isnāt interested in DX or semi-local reception interference - only interference to local stations & then user should do all they can to at their own end to reduce or eliminate the problem.
The LED down lights in my house interfere with the weaker dx fm signals, and also reduces the C/N on Sydney tv. It also increase the number of errors in my Dab+ signal.
Wollongong tv being on UHF does not suffer from this interference just the dreaded co-Chanel with Newcastle.
Some mild enhancement from the south today.
Sydney stations could be received via the auto seek tuning on the car radio around the streets of Newcastle with full RDS and very few dead spots. Normally lucky just to get station name and they would break up constantly. At home, Sydney commercials are in at 51db on the Teccy, ABCs from Wollongong not far behind at 46db.
Not much enhancement from the north, but did manage to get 97.9 ABC Classic Coffs Harbour from the Braye Park Lookout in Newcastle. Also got 96.7 ABC Classic from Upper Namoi. A few Sydney community stations like SWR and 2NSB could also be received with RDS there too.
A while ago there was a power outage in my area. I had forgotten how good indoor reception used to be at my place.
Nowadays with the myriad of electrical devices, I can generally only get the local stations indoors, but with the power out, I decided to take my Tecsun out and with nothing to create RF interference nearby, I could get distant stations like 2BS and ABC Classic Newcastle on the FM band and on AM, stations like 2LT and 2CR, whilst indoors.
Used to be a LED sign at the high school in my home town that caused -80dbm interference at 30-50 metres in all directions on 145.150 and 146.900 on the 2M amateur band, used to drive me up the wall every time I drove past it. I complained to the school and they said they couldnāt do anything about itā¦ Put a report into the ACMA about it and they said unless it was causing interference to emergency services or aircraft it was not a priority, that was 6 years ago and last year when I was in my home town it still has not been fixedā¦
I have noticed that a lot of car fridges cause interference to FM radioā¦ and the one that I used to have trouble with is when I used a Raspberry Pi for ham radio use and it used to wipe out the FM band in my car all but the most strong local stations
Iāve heard of numerous problems with these LED down-lights, have seen YouTube videos of a people turning on their LED down-lights & completely loosing their DAB+ reception. Canāt remember what the solution was.
As for the standard replacement of the screw or bayonet house globes, I havenāt had any RF noise problems with the Aldi German made LED globes.
Well, I bought this antenna yesterday to experiment with FM DXing. Pretty cheap at $50 from my local HiQ Aerials place.
Gives an improvement of about 3db on the Tecsun for most stations, though it seems to be worse for some community stations that seem to favour vertical polarity. It can only be mounted horizontally.
The other problem I have whereby its not a permanent installation is that Iāve found the snap out reflectors donāt fold back and the other elements are held in by rivets that canāt be easily removed, so itās not easily stored or movable. Itās an unwieldy beast at 1.8 metres wide. Though Iāve got a wide cupboard that I think I can hide it in for when itās not in use.
hope it yields good DX results for you. For me - thatās why I bough that circular omni-directional antenna because its easier to fit in the car to go on DXāpeditions. Yes its low gain, but my FM preamp can compensate for that. That 3 element antenna would be ok if one had a ute but canāt fit in my 'lil i30
They are installing LED street lights all over Cooma now. Replacing the sodium vapour lamps. Will be interesting to see how that goes for QRM.
