I get a lot of co-channeling up here … a lot of it can be nulled in/out with the telescopic antenna however - I’m lucky to not need an fixed external antenna for my results.
Would be great to get a DVB-T version too so I can get Wollongong TV at home in Newcastle.
And re 2RPH - the delay is almost nothing these - maybe a fraction of a second… so makes it more difficult for me to tell which is which now! Back when it was fed by satellite to Newcastle, it used to be about 5 seconds behind Sydney.
I did a bit of listening about 7:30pm last night & found I had 95.3, 96.9 quite good at home, 101.7 was kinda there, but scratchy mono, I didn’t try the others so don’t know, but thinking it was a funny tropo event last night, either frequency related some there others not or small area related again some there some not, depending on TX location?
Don’t think you would’ve had too much overload from Artarmon at Chatswood last night, SCA are at Gore Hill, have been for about a week & half now, ARN are the only ones (community aside) at Artarmon currently, & will be on slightly reduced power from tomorrow until 30th Nov. due to some works at Artarmon, (though they may choose to go to Gore Hill).
Yeah that’s something I’d luv to do with a SDR or better still for the whole 20MHz of FM broadcast spectrum.
I forgot to try & use the FM Co-Channel Canceller on 97.3 Illawara last night in an attempt to receive Lake Macquarie FM. No luck using it with 98.1 in an attempt to hear ABC Newsradio Gosford. Looks like more tropo dx predicted along parts of the NSW coast again tonight, so might might have an opportunity to try again or in future when stronger duct occurs.
A bit hard to tell from that angle but it’s offset from the mast and intersects the horizontal section - so it shouldn’t affect reception much. It’s probably a bit of a stretch to call Eagle FM permanent as it does fade out to nothing at times - but it is always there to some degree. With tropo I’ve had it at 3 bars with RDS. Brock used to be permanent too until Northside moved their tx a while back - now its mush of both.
@ozbark RFBurns has explained it better than me but yes its essentially a mixed dipole and probably wouldn’t have any noticeable advantage over a 45 deg mixed. My main reason for getting it was vertical reception - the matchmaster one or academy “fm102” is horizontal only. And I think it was cheaper
FYI I’ve found the best improvements in performance come from using good cable (RG6 quad shield) and F type connectors.
Just looking at academy tv now, it seems that model must be discontinued but they do now have a DAB only (200MHz) vertical.
I noticed that too, Laceys seem to be the only ones that sells that type of antenna now. I probably would have purchased one over the Matchmaster Omni fm, but there is not a lot of space between the other two antennas on the mast. The mixed polarisation probably would help on the most weakest of signals, though I am still happy with the Matchmaster.
Yes the mast is very full, and because of the length of the mast I could not get the correct spacing between each of the antennas.
However with hours of fiddling and the cheap and nasty Antsig antenna pointer I have been able to find the right spot for each of the antennas.
BTW - I noticed a cool intelligent feature on the Icom R-8600. You notice in the videos I have the preamp on, but when I tune past my local station on 1602khz, it automatically dis-engages & then re-engages when back on adjacent frequencies. I thought that is rather impressive
Just looked at the Hepburn map, enhancements right up and down the coast. Looks like the most intense will be later from the south.
There is some less intense ducts over Canberra, so Canberra and Goulburn maybe a possibility later tonight / early Monday morning when the sea breeze arrives and creates the duct.
I was doing some transmitter maintenance for CoastFM Gosford this afternoon & had the TX off for short periods, as soon as the TX went off, the radio I was monitoring with switched to Triple J, & I had to listen carefully to make sure the TX was off.
There was possibly a bit of enhancement, but I’d say Triple J is normally quite strong underneath CoastFM on 96.3, tropo puts Triple J over the top.
Not at the moment, we’ve spent all our money on Zetta & Wheatstone studio upgrades, we have to save some more to buy a new combiner filter, or get a specialist in to retune it (if possible at all), if we were to change frequencies.
Good grief. That sounds fantastic! How does one manage to do this? I have a HackRF One which is 20MHZ. Theoretically I could record all the FM stations at once?
97.5 Is just receivable above the static here. It looks like the Hepburn charts are on the ball with the stronger tropo coming from the south, at least at my location.
I have pulse in stereo over Cool Country CC, and some very weak 2BA on 103.5.
Power Fm is decoding full RDS.
Obviously it could swing around to the north later on but at this stage there is minimal enhancements from the north.
- one of the best FM antenna in the world
