Tropo for me tonight is enhancing the Newcastle, Middle Brother, and Illawarra stations.
For me of the Newcastles other then the high powered nationals, KO and 2NUR were the strongest. My Digitech DAB+ Fm tuner was able to decode RDS on KO but not on Hit 106.9 as VOX fm was co-channeling underneath.
Of the Middle Brothers, ABC Classic Fm was booming in on 98.7 in Stereo, Triple J could be heard over Coast Fm on 96.3.
Why does ABC Classic Fm on 98.7 get into Sydney better then the others from Middle Brothers?
Of the Illawarra Power fm was coming in hiss free, and there was slight enhancement of Eagle Fm. No NZ tropo received, no inland tropo either.
Re 98.7 from Middle Brother⌠I have noticed this too⌠the only thing I can think of is that it is a higher frequency and they apparently propagate better.
NZ tropo faded out not long after I posted last night; the signals were very unstable, probably due to the rain and storms periodically cutting across the path at this end. There is no NZ tropo this morning but could surge again later today or tomorrow with hot conditions predicted.
Regarding the Middle Brother stations, I find 97.1 just as strong as 98.7 from this location, if not more so. Some tuners have trouble separating 97.1 from Nova; the splash from 98.5 2OOO FM is a lot less so 98.7 can be easily resolved. 95.5 is lower in power (I think), whilst 96.3 has to contend with 2CCC Gosford. 94.7 NewsRadio is definitely much lower in power than the rest.
Iâm getting an oddball religious station on 89.0 aiming WNW. A single male preacher with low deviation, slightly distorted, audio. The likely location is somewhere in outback SA or southern NT. Alice Springs FM is also in.
Tropo to NZ has surged again as expected, with 91.6 More FM Kaitaia pushing 3 bars on the Sony. Radiohead and others near the coast should try this frequency over the next couple of days (91.4 and 103.4 too).
Very little tropo here tonight. Around 730pm 2VOX was enhanced with RDS also received, which has only happened a few times.
Of the Newcastle commercials / community FM stations, New Fm and 2NUR only made it just above the noise floor. KO and 2ST were mashed together.
What made tonight worth mentioning, instead of getting ABC Classic FM on 98.7 from Middle Brother which is semi permanent at my location, I received Kandos /Rylstone Community radio in its place. The signal was very weak and kept fading in and out.
Nothing here on 91.6mhz just static. I have only got NZ Fm via Eskip at my location at Stanhope Gardens 50km from the Coast which last happened on the 21st December.
How far inland does NZ tropo normally go? Or is it just received because of your setup?
Do you have a photo of your FM antenna you could share with us?
Now getting Kandos Rylstone Community radio in stereo.
For some reason, I never seem to get much NZ tropo.
I am pretty close to the coast (about 5km inland) but up highish (about 140 m ASL).
Not sure if that makes a difference or not.
I also admit that I donât check the even numbered frequencies ie. those ending in .0, .2, .4 that closely.
Last night, there were good signals around, but not as strong as the last 2 nights, so I didnât do much DXing, and as it was a very warm night outside.
Thereâs a southerly change due this evening (which will be welcome in many ways, as its forecast to hit 41 degrees here today!).
There was quite a bit of tropo this morning in Sydney also. Unfortunately, I only had about a minute to scan through the band before I had to go off to work. Some catches I wasnât sure about:
106.7 - a commercial station; had an ad for Bing Lee
103.3 - another commercial sounding station
94.3 - talk program discussing sports
90.7 - was playing a promo for a program; didnât sound like any of the ABC stations