Quite good tropo at my location tonight from the north. All Newcastle commercial fmâs / 2NU are in stereo but not strong enough to decode RDS.
What is weird considering the strength of the Newcastle signals Wollongong tv has been rock solid with signal strength at 99% / 100% quality with no pixelation.
Middle Brother quite strong with Classic fm the best as always, even the low powered News Radio coming in just above the noise floor.
Port Stephens in to with 97.5 2HD the strongest.
The duct must be just north of Newcastle since it is favouring Middle Brother / Port Stephens with Newcastle at moderate strength.
Newcastle commercial fmâs fading but Port Stephens / Middle Brother getting stronger.
Yes Wollongong tv perfect tonight. Usually moderate ducting from Newcastle is enough to kill tv reception from the gong at my location in NW Sydney, but not tonight.
Similar here. Managed to use the SDR plug-in to phase semi-locals 102.9 2ST, 106.9 VOX & 99.7 2SSR to receive the Newcastle stations on those frequencies. Also just now cancelled 2CCC to receive triple J Taree on 96.3. Ditto re 97.3 2OLD received when 2ILA cancelled.
Also receiving the Port Stephenâs stations, 101.5 2GLA & all the ABC Coffs Harbour outlets in. Tropo âmightâ possibly improve here as it moves inland overnight according to Hepburn tropo maps.
Lost Wollongong tv now, not from Newcastle interference, as it is quite weak at present but massive signals reflections away caused by the strong ducting. i98 faded down to the noise floor just before and it is a semi local signal here with RDS.
As per usual with Newcastle tropo events in this location, the ABC & Triple M have the best reception followed by Hit with New FM barely there. Think I might be able to get Rhema on 99.7, but 2NUR-FM isnât there at all (only seem to receive that one on rare occasions).
Middle Brother stations, of course Classic FM and Triple J (when Coast FM is nulled out) have the best reception. 95.5 and 97.1 are the hardest to receive due to the overspill from nearby Sydney commercial stations.
Hope to again receive the SCA Mid North Coast stations or Port Stephens FM over 2BACR one day, but I think those mightâve been a one off!
For me my strongest Newcastle fm stations like you are Triple J and Classic fm which are both permanent at my location.
Next best but only received with ducting to get over 2ST Triple M, and Hit 106.9 over Vox fm.
New fm and 2NUR are always the weakest.
I used to received Rhema Newcastle with tropo but since 2SSR put up their new broadcast antenna. 2SSR holds Rhema out. You can hear the interference underneath its signal from Rhema.
Middle Brother, Classic fm is the strongest by far. It is semi permanent at my location. Triple J would be the next strongest but suffers massive splatter from the Edge 96.1
97.1 RN would be the next best but also suffers splatter from Nova.
Port Stephens 97.5 2HD is the strongest for me and is often received at a reasonable strength while the other broadcasts are just above the noise floor.
Yes I know about this, it makes receiving Mix 106.3 very difficult with inland tropo events. I can only receive it over KIIS by tuning to 106.25 to overcome the worst of the splatter.
WS seems to have a pretty wide bandwidth as I can clearly hear itâs presence on 101.9 (when from Artarmon as it is now) during strong Sydney tropo even though I also have Triple J on the opposite side on 102.1.
KIIS also does this on 106.3, but for me that is less remarkable since 106.1 has a quieter sound.
Itâs harder to make similar observations about 2DAY and Triple M as 104.3, 104.7 and 105.1 are dominated by STAR and NEW.
I have noticed that two regarding WS fm, Triple J Orange and Canberra are much harder to receive due to the splatter of WS. Great Lakes is very hard to receive due to being smack bang between Hit and WS fm.
The wide bandwidth must be an ARN thing.
Not sure why you guys are getting wide Bandwidth on the Sydney ARN stations, Iâve just looked now & both transmitters are modulating at 103% average, no higher than 104% modulation, & looking at the spectrum coming out of the transmitters, both are well within the deviation mask.
The worst offender for overmodulation here is ABC Goulburn on 90.3. Programme content is distorted, and splatters a bit on 90.1 and 90.5 even though Iâm 50 km or so from the transmitter. Goulburn would really suck to live in with all of its transmitter issues.
I canât speak for others. I took some âroughâ bandwidth measurements from the SDR# spectrum display just now on several high powered FM stations in Sydney.
The SDR has about 95dB blocking dynamic range.
BW measurements taken when usually high energy rock/pop music playing (no talk).
BW measurements taken down to noise level skirts.
Carsons (BW) Law says:
Could also be that my TV antenna favours higher frequencies, also mismatch between 50 ohm rx input & 75 ohm feeder, but I wouldnât have thought so much that KIIS BW is so much higher in BW, unless radiation pattern for 106.5 is a bit higher compared to others at my QTH? Is there something I havenât accounted for?
Is my results similar to other Sydney DXers with a SDR spectrum display?
interesting that Kiss 106.5 has the weakest signal of the high powered down this way. Not that I can receive it now that Iâm living in Cooma itself. Could get it at Numeralla.
