They should never have put the Auckland FM’ers on Skytower. Unless your radio has excellent selectivity, you may as well forget about listening to FM in the CBD and inner suburbs. Horrendous multipath and images galore.
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I wonder what their reason was for moving them from Waitura in the first place? (sorry if incorrect spelling)
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2MBS went full power at 4pm this afternoon, they ramped it up to 5kW for a while & were happy with everything, so decided not to wait any longer & ramped it up to full power.
They’re expecting to stay at full power & are now at the same power as Koori & Hope, so you can do all your comparisons equally.
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The Skytower is a great location for the FM stations (duopoly), to broadcast all over Auckland. I remember when More FM was only broadcasting on 5kW, a decade or so ago, you could still pick it up just as good as the the TRN (NZME) stations, who were running at 50kW.
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Also when George moved to 96.6, after being sold to Mediaworks , the signal improved dramatically when it was on high power, I’m presuming, from the top of the SkyTower.
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I actually can’t tell the difference in the signal strength between the back up, and the main transmitter.
Artarmon is closer to me than the old city site, but I am sure I got a stronger signal from Governor Philip Tower. I use to have splatter over Classic fm CT. Still no splatter on 102.7 or even on 102.3, allowing me to receive weak Triple J CWS / Classic fm Canberra. The music 2MBS was playing was some very quiet classical music which maybe the reason there was no splatter onto adjacent frequencies.
Is 2MBS on the 170m commercial fm stack or the 160m Community fm stack at Artarmon?
RDS is working fine with my tuner displaying Fine Music
PTY Classical Music
No scrolling text.
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Thanks for the update.
There is some tropo about this morning (am getting the Batemans Bay ABCs on 101.9 and 103.5), but can say that 2MBS is now at the same signal strength as Hope.
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2MBS is on the community FM antenna, the commercial FM antenna is at capacity which is 80kW input (4 x 20kW transmitters), if Hope want to use it for some reason & they are the only ones who can, the commercial stations have to reduce power or go to Gore Hill.
I’m not sure if 2MBS had any channel filtering, & if they did how good it was at Governor Phillip Tower? Because 2MBS & HOPE are now at the same site on the same antenna, both have tight channel filters in the combiner chain so neither should spill over outside their respective channel space & interfere with each other. We’ve done this because they are adjacent channels not on the normal channel spacing, this is probably why you had splatter from the CBD site but don’t have any now?
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Checked 2MBS again this afternoon and no splatter onto 102.7. Classic fm CT can be heard clearly on that frequency. Very well engineered.
It would be nice if Koori fm (2LND) had the same filtering as 2MBS as it splatters over onto 93.5 quite badly at times, sometimes even decoding an RDS signal on 93.5.
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Having a look on the SDR this afternoon:
Koori bandwidth (BW) is around 370kHz out to my noise floor skirts due to modulation/deviation levels, so I can see this would effect your reception of Eagle FM.
With 2MBS the content is often very quiet & hence bandwidth will be much less, having a look just now BW was typically less than 300kHz, maybe 330kHz during louder sections.
Transmitter filtering looks fine (clean) to me across the FM spectrum (although distractingly I think I have a new source of local clock/pulsing QRM across the FM BCB today)
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Can report I had 2BS 95.1 at stronger than normal strength last night - a little tropo lift. It was enough to bring in a little RDS. The only other FM station with a very slight enhancement was 2BLU 89.1
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Calling all banana benders.
I am currently watching a road trip between Cairns and Rockhampton on YouTube. To keep it realistic and because I’m a nerd, I’m using the local radio stations as background music (currently around Cardwell, so streamed 4KZ tonight).
I plan to stick with 4KZ until just after Ingham whereupon I will switch to Power 100. Then I might go with Sweet FM Ayr and then Gem FM Bowen to Airlie Beach, where the first video ends.
Between Airlie Beach and Rocky is where I’m struggling. Do the Collinsville Rebel/Breeze duo get into the coastal strip at all around Proserpine to Mackay? Otherwise I might go with 4CRM, since I will be avoiding anything from Triple M/ (s)hit/Star etc. And what about around Marlborough- do Mackay and/or Rockhampton outlets make it there? AFAIK there are no local radio stations in Sarina, Marlborough or St. Lawrence.
In real life, I haven’t visited the stretch between The Caves (just north of Rocky) and Babinda.
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Sounds like something I would do, I’ve used a radio plugin for Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator that gives me streams to choose from depending on what area I am in
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It was a long time ago when I last did it but I recall there was very little on the dial in that zone around St Lawrence. It was the year of the Hottest 100 of All Time when we did the road trip (so must have been 2009), so Triple J was being listened to for the most part, and even then on a basic Toyota car radio there were parts where both Rocky and Mackay were difficult.
Pretty sure from about Marlborough south you start to get the Rocky stations, but again it’s been a long time so happy to be corrected there.
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As is needed. I consider the fortuitous overspill to be essential. l
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That area would be a prime candidate for a Rebel/Breeze duopoly then. So stuff it, I’ll install my own translator for the purposes of this ‘trip’. Thanks for the info.
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Agree, I did Gold Coast to Cairns in 2001, and Rockhampton to Mackay was a challenge radio wise…. I would hit “seek” on the rental car radio (VX Holden Commodore) around Marlborough and it would go around the dial 3 or 4 times before settling on either Sea 101.5 or Hot 107.9 because there was nothing else!
Couldn’t get any ABCs at all (with the TXs both being on the wrong side of Rocky or Mackay for that part of the world). And Mackay stations didn’t come in at all until around Clairview from memory.
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Mackay to Rocky is certainly a challenge! South of Marlborough you should start to get Rocky stations, particularly 4RO.
Having recently driven Airlie to Mackay I admit I was on 4MK nearly all the way on 1026
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Around St Laurence is a black spot for around 20km and a bit patchy between St Laurence and Clairview.
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I found 1026 is no way near a powerful as it was in the old days (80s, 90’s) I used to pick it up in Yeppoon in the mid to late 80’s when I was a kid. Now you would have no chance.
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