Last time I listened (2023)they did not play any rock songs at all. I heard they refreshed the music format last year.
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Same as the rest of the Ace FM stations, very top-40 now.
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Last time I listened, they never played anything older then 2015.
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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Car FM Transmitters
Picking up what must be someone’s personal transmitter. Not in a (moving) car as it is stable and not fluctuating. Seems unusual choice due to closeness to local stations.
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Some inland tropo about this afternoon.
Had Canberra stations with RDS on 91.1, 92.7, 101.5, 104.7 and 106.3… oddly not 91.9 though, that’s usually the easiest/first one to get. Signals were a bit variable and did fluctuate a bit.
Goulburn low powered ABC stations heard on 89.5 and 90.3 as well.
SW Slopes ABCs heard too, but weaker, some mixing with Coffs Harbour, also weak. Also heard weak Upper Namoi 96.7 ABC Classic too.
Conditions look to be similar tonight, will try again then.
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Still have a NE’ly here so that would be maintaining some tropo into Newcastle. This could continue over the next couple of days as the westerlies don’t come back with any authority until Tuesday.
There is currently a weak change forecast for Wednesday night which may interrupt the tropo, or if weak enough it might actually boost tropo by introducing more maritime air. The change may be enough to stop NZ tropo though- best chance of that might be Tuesday. The heat pool inland doesn’t budge all week.
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Checking my TEF severs’ logs, it looks like I’ve had RDS decodes literally every single day from Canberra here in Sydney since I installed my 5x yagi setup on the 14th of January.
Curious about people’s thoughts – is it more likely just a prolonged summer enhancement? Or is it permanent reception? (Although with fading in/out). I’m 234 km away from Canberra at my location.
Other sources of reception that have been there every day since the yagis were installed (but fading in/out) include Manning River [Middle Brother] (292 km), Goulburn (151 km), Orange (207km) and to a lesser extent, Batemans Bay (227 km), South West Slopes (308 km), Central Western Slopes (349 km).
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Are all of the decodes occurring at the same time of day (eg. early morning)? If they are, it could be a temperature inversion. The same thing happens to me with the Riverland and Adelaide FMs, in my case its overnight lows.
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Just ran some stats on the number of times that Canberra’s Triple J’s RDS was received over the past two weeks:
Looks like they are indeed mostly concentrated in the early morning, but they happen at all hours of the day also.
Edit: I initially had alerts running whenever DX was received, but I was getting too many alerrts, so I changed it to alert only once an hour.
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Looks like indeed there’s a bit of overnight temperature inversions going on which increases your effective range. With that being said, its more than likely to be semi-permanent judging by the fact you can still get them sometimes during the day. Is Triple J the strongest signal received typically?
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Typically, Triple J gets the most decodes, followed by SBS. Decodes from the other stations are rare – only with enhanced conditions. ABC/SBS are higher powered than the rest, so I assume that’s why they are usually the ones that get RDS decodes. There’s no RDS transmission on NewsRadio, but that usually comes in pretty well. And I believe the RDS on ABC Classic is particularly weak, which explains why there’s no RDS decodes from it.
Similar distribution graph for SBS on 105.5:
I wonder why they both dip at 4am – whether it’s some type of local interference or if it’s something atmospheric.
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When I was in Canberra in early January I couldn’t get an RDS decode on ABC Classic even when I had direct line of sight to the transmitter. They must’ve turned the RDS off completely.
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It could very well be some sort of atmospheric conditions that change, which can explain why there’s a dip. The ABC/SBSs have always been the easiest to catch, the commercials are usually at 2/3 to 1/2 of the power of these plus are located lower on a transmitter mast which doesn’t help things with those.
I’ve seen this with Adelaide, Riverland, Murray Valley, Central and South West VIC nationals.
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Not Canberra I know, but last couple times I’ve been to Adelaide there’s been no RDS on Triple J at all, even when I went up to Crafers / Mount Lofty (where the transmitters are located).
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Seems to be working at the moment. I got an RDS decode from it a few days ago:
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On another topic, it seems like my north-facing antenna (the one at the bottom) is pretty much useless. DX signals coming in from the north are better received on either the west antenna or the northeast antenna. I suspect it’s because the north antenna doesn’t quite reach above the roofline, unfortunately:
It’s a shame FM antennas with more than three or four elements are difficult to source in Australia.
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Do you have the space to flip it over to vertical orientation? It may help all things considered. One of my co-workers at work is trying to convince me to build a 7 element yagi and mounting it 10ft above my FTA aerial, a bit of a stretch knowing me
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I’ll share my opinion, which is of course only mine, and not the opinion of FMLIST. My guess is it’s permanent. It does seem “spammy” to see Eagle FM logged every hour, and to an extent, the Canberra stations. I don’t necessarily believe they shouldn’t be logged at all, but having them logged every 1-2 hours kind of diminishes the impact of ‘rare’ DX catches and causes them to blend in with everything else.
I receive Edge FM in Deniliquin virtually 24/7, which is 230km. It must be transmitting at low RDS levels, as the signal needs to be quite strong just for PI to be decoded (or it could be due to multipath, as their transmission is vertical only, and therefore stronger on my “noisier” dipole than the Yagi) . Hit 99.7 as well as other Griffith stations, over 410km, are also there much of the day, though generally not strong enough to cause any RDS log spam.
My current settings are 200km/90min, although I might consider increasing that back to 250km if I feel it becomes too spammy.
It’s that tough “in between” distance of “Should it be logged, or should it not be logged?”
That’s very likely the cause. My findings are height makes little difference for local stations, but with DX, 5 metres vs 10 metres could be the difference between barely hearing a station at all, to receiving it with RDS.
The “takeoff angle” of an antenna is influenced by its height above the ground. Some days, a lower antenna may actually perform just as well, or even slightly better, than a higher one. However, this is the exception rather than the rule, which is why the vast majority of the time, higher antennas perform better.
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Unfortunately, with six aerials on the same mast and one already below the roof line, there isn’t any space to mount it vertically.
Yes, hence the reason for my earlier post. I had the distance thresholds set with my previous lower antenna setup where Eagle FM RDS was a rarity. I was wanting to set the thresholds higher given how frequently Goulburn (and to a lesser extent, Canberra) now come in. Only thing is that the Newcastle commercial/community stations, about ~126 km away, are still a rare catch. So if I filter out Eagle FM, I also lose the alerts for Newcastle. I guess I’ll increase the distance to filter out Eagle FM in any case.
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