I note that Sydney stations also have reduced power to the east – not sure what that would be protecting though. New Zealand? Or just not necessary to have that much power going to the east given there’s not that much distance from the transmitters to the oceans?
I see 2LT and Move Katoomba are also only 40W towards Sydney. They still come in really well given how low the power is towards Sydney, presumably due to the elevation. It’s hard for me to get DX stations underneath them.
0 kW? I don’t think I’ve seen any other FM locations with 0 kW power in a specific direction.
Yes I had River 94.9 with an RDS decode at my location in NW Sydney earlier this year, photo posted up earlier in this thread. I missed the actual opening, most likely SpE, but with my tuner left on and tuned to 94.9 the RDS display was still displaying River 94.9 while receding Power fm.
When flying back to Sydney from Brisbane River 94.9 is always the last QLD radio station to be received especially if seated on the right side of the plane. It pretty much switches to Rhema / Power fm.
Had River 94.9 once in Sydney. From Melbourne I had brief 90.7 SYN FM along with suspected Bay FM Geelong. Western Victoria (Hamilton) and Bendigo were a little more common.
I also did Swan Hill 102.1 and 105.3 via tropo but only the once. Good signals too. The path may sneak through the Burragorang on rare occasions. Had Bendigo several times via tropo too and was in very weakly via As most days.
I’m not sure how they manage that, given NOW FM is Vertically polarised which inherently is omni-directional in the horizontal plane, unless you have an antenna like a long Yagi which would make the signal very directional & narrow beamwidth, which I don’t think they have?
The latter is the reason for not sending much power to the East, if they did, it would be just wasted power which by restricting East can be sent in another direction without needing to up the transmitter power output.
That theoretical radiation pattern is interesting too, when I get some time I’ll see how closely it actually matches to the real measured antenna output pattern at Artarmon?
Interesting plot. I’m assuming the red line is the direction of the St George area? Oatley is probably just in the 25 kW zone. Bungendore cops the full 150 kW which is why Sydney is such a pest even this far away.
The plot appears to be for 2DAY 104.1 which has no ERP restriction towards the Upper Hunter (Murrurundi). 104.9 and 105.7 have an even closer co channel at Muswellbrook; do these have a null?
I’m wondering what the small 55 kW null to the west is for as well.
I’m not entirely sure about triple j on 105.7, but Triple M on 104.9 has the exact same specifications at 2Day does, so if that plot is 100% correct then no 104.9 won’t have a null towards the Upper Hunter, I’m fairly certain the ABC/SBS FM’s are the same pattern as the commercials from Artarmon/Gore Hill, the antennas at both sites are identical, so the actual transmit pattern is identical between the Nationals & commercials at both sites.
The 55kW null to the West is theoretically protection to blasting Sydney into the Katoomba licence area.
Really strong tropo here in Sydney here too. Newcastle has been pretty much non-stop over yesterday/today. Also got Port Macquarie commercials, low-powered Port Stephens stations, GLFM, Dubbo, etc.
Spent part of this morning cutting up a tree that didn’t survive the cyclone. Was fortunate that the antennas, however, did survive, as I was very worried ahead of the blow. I think it might be a good time to own a Mr Antenna franchise in SEQ right now.
Agreed, especially for residents (particularly DXers) who have large antenna farms on their roofs. I don’t think we can afford to see these antenna farms being knocked down by cyclones and other powerful storms. I wonder just how many TV antennas were knocked off people’s roofs because of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred?
