Thanks @TV-Expert
interesting that SRN feel it necessary to make a submission beyond CRA when other operators didnt
Then theres these gems in CRA’s submission
CRA urges the ACMA to take appropriate enforcement action to prevent community radio stations from broadcasting content of general interest.
CRA requests that the ACMA also considers halting the proliferation of narrowcast licences which take up spectrum for relatively small audiences, especially when providing content already supplied by commercial and national broadcasters.
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So, basically CRA opposes the provision of radio licences for anyone not operating a commercial service, and if they do operate a non-commercial service, it should not have widespread appeal. Figures
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I’m sure they’re also against awarding more commercial licences too
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Which I don’t understand - more stations means more members right?
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But they would be funded by and have policies dictated by its members.
It’s a bit like a union.
And the members themselves wouldn’t want more stations as it would mean more competition and a dilution of their share of ad revenue.
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being a 200 km+ path… I doubt this would even work and if it did the availability would be crap… especially in summer.
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What signal would wipe it in Summer?
TVT engineers told me in 1993 that off air feed was used for Queenstown. Analogue of course.
I think he may be referring to the instability of signals during summer.
They can be known to “drop short” which in some circumstances can leave those in fringe areas wth no reception.
Temperature inversion causing fading… or even possible inversion and interference from Melbourne DAB
Analogue is a different kettle of fish!
I am not aware of Queenstown ever being fed via Mt wellington. As far as I know Queenstown was always fed from Round Hill → Companion Hill → Mt Reid → Mt Owen
I will check the one of the guys who worked in Tassie TV from 1964…Interesting fact… the first TV translator in Tassie was Derby
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They may have been referring to it being a relay as that.
No surprise for Derby, the NE has difficult terrain.
Hey mate,
Can can confirm that Mt Owen was fed by some epic sized Yagi’s and a UHF Gridpack antenna’s off Mt Wellington. Not sure it was the preferred input method but they are installed none the less. I think they now just daisy chain the down from the coast using offair equipment as inputs for the local TX sites.
The large RX antennas for Mt Wellington are down over the bank at the communications hut further up the hill from BA, and have a long on-ground coax run to the BA hut.
Honestly the techo’s that installed the antenna’s down this bank would have had ball of steel, as the drop below them is horrific, next stop Lake Burbury…
My experience is the FM’s off Welly are easily picked up from that location in all weather conditions, by even my work site radio and the car/ute gets DAB at full strength (according to the little signal strength meter).
Cheers
Chris.
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Hey Chris,
Im not sure what antennas you refer to but Input1 for the Commericals are feed from Companion hill … SC7 and TDT on the UHF gridpak with Input2 being a Panel antenna with offset sectors.
ABC and SBS are feed also from Companion hill but their backup is satellite.
This hasnt changed since the analogue days
Lets be totally honest… yes it might work when your there but paths of that distance are never stable especially in hot weather. To give you an idea we had offair from Mt Wellington being received at mt barrow which is about the same distance from Mt wellington to Mt owen and in summer that link would fad at all hours or day and night… some nights are that bad i wanted to throw my phone out the window!
That particular link had 20+ db of headroom and you could 40db of headroom and it will still fade and drop out
So I made some enquires with one of the techs who had worked for TNT since 1964
@crankymedia your actually right…he said
“at Queentown WIN or the then TVT was indeed fed from Mt Welly the signal at Mr reed was fed from MT Owen… after aggregation we had a feed from MT wellington (analogue) for when interference from mainland or signal got too bad! We shared WIN’s receive antenna”
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Yeah… Knowing Grants, they’d likely just put a single AudioVault server in the rack in Queenstown and send it up over an 850 meg link, or run AudioVault straight off the top of Mt Owen?
I’m fairly sure with a lot of their high power relays, they do local playout at each site or studio. I could be wrong?
KIX in almost all locations is run by a Raspberry Pi streaming over 3G/4G with a buffer of about 60 seconds to allow for minor connection dropouts.
They were previously fed by satellite by this was turned off a couple of years ago.
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Was that with a digital signal @radioengineer? Plus lets be honest the noise floor on Welly and Barrow is a wee-bit higher than Owen, so it may help if that signals abit weak at the far end…
Ran the ruler of a path from Owen to Welly and surprisingly clear, I thought there would be rock in the way but nothing…so LoS is good. But I absolutely take on board what your saying re-fading and ducting.
Talking to the BA boy’s the other day, apparently they use some tricky cross pol arrangements to get a stable signal from round hill down the coast…
Next time I am at Owen, I’ll try and get some photo’s of the RX antennas…
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A lot of the old experimental raspberry pi boxes have been changed over to a small NUC type PC for playout that work and run a lot more reliably I believe
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ACMA has today released its consultation paper for the AM-FM conversion of 2AD Armidale, which is proposed for 94.3 MHz. It is also proposed to set up its FM translator for Walcha on 92.5 MHz.
More: https://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/-/media/D786FF4E7051491EBE9D15A2267ADA95.ashx
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The choice of 94.3 doesn’t surprise me, as that was proposed as an alternate frequency for 2ARM when the ABA initially proposed 92.1 as a 2nd commercial FM station for Tamworth back in early 2000s when those LAPs were last revised.
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