Here’s the 2ST AM Transmitter Site.
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That’s very odd, there’s never been any planned service on or near 999 anywhere on the Mid North Coast that I know of.
There still is sufficient space on FM to accommodate new stations, particularly since NBN-3 was switched off.
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Yes, because 981 2NM Muswellbrook is too close in frequency & location for AM spacing.
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I doubt the null would be for Taree protection, more likely stopping the reception into Wollongong/Sydney.
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There is nothing listed in my 1986 ABT Broadcasting Services Book so it’s highly likely that such a service never existed. Fake news/hoax.
I’d say @anon71206228 has it right. 2ST 999 has never been receivable here in the daytime; I didn’t realise the sharpness of the null.
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Indeed. Whenever I’m down in the Illawarra, I find that the Sydney commercial AM stations come in stronger than 2ST, even as far south as around Kiama.
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I can’t imagine that the cost of running a 50kw site is 5 times more then a 10kw site, plus there would be a lot of duplicated cost that running multiple sites would include
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Now that I am back from holidays I have had a chance to run the proposed 91.7 2ST Nowra Specs through the Natuel Coverage generator, to create coverage maps for the new service at Cambewarra Mountain, and to see if there are better options to what ACMA is proposing.
Here is the coverage for 2ST Nowra 10KW over bearings 50’-190’ this aims the full power at Nowra, Shoalhaven Heads and Sussex Inlets
The 6.3KW beam over bearings 190’-220’ doesn’t cover any major towns, it only serves to link the coverage of 91.7 Nowra and 106.7 Milton / Ulladulla
Now the sectors of most interest to us is the 5KW beam which covers 0’-50’ and 330’-360’, the power aimed towards Sydney, Wollongong, Kiama and parts of the Southern Highlands. As you can see in the map below the signal falls short of Kiama where it should go, but comes in at rural grade or higher in the southern highlands were the 102.9 signal is designed to cover. This is also the case in the 1.6KW map aimed south of Mittagong. In some places 91.7 may even be received better then 102.9
88.5 2ST Kiama @ 5W from Saddleback Mountain, I believe this is a waste of spectrum as this service will only cover Kiama at a rural grade of service at best
I have estimated the car coverage based on the 5KW coverage. On a good car radio reception of 91.7 2ST Nowra could be achieved in Kiama, Wollongong. across the Southern Highlands, far eastern suburbs of Sydney and elevated north shore / Hills district, but it will be weak at best.
Is this the best option for the conversion??
I believe no, I still think Knights Hill is a far better option.
I would mount the 2ST antenna at 58m on the Win tower below Wave / i98’s broadcast antenna. I would use a similar antenna to what Power fm currently use with 50KW aimed at Nowra, 10KW towards Kiama, and 1.5KW towards Wollongong and the Southern Highlands if possible. With this setup 106.7 would no longer be required.
What are peoples thoughts?
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I agree Knights Hill is a better option, I can only think 2ST wanted to keep 102.9 for it’s local ads and morning program, and the current specs are a compromise to achieve that.
Either that, or it’s an admission from the ABA/ACMA that they got the Power FM specs wrong at the time.
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I think there is a bit of each in there, here are the pros and cons of both.
91.7 2ST from Cambewarra Mountain allows them to keep 106.7 in operation and the seperate feed for the Highlands on 102.9.
They only need one direct STL link from studio to transmitter. Power fm requires two hops, studio, to Cambewarra Mountain and then to Knights Hill.
If Cambewarra Mountain was 2ST preferred option, where they would not be happy is with the power to the north, and having to use 88.5 for Kiama which would not cover the town well at all.
I estimated you would need at least 30KW to the north east to cover Kiama from Cambewarra Mountain, but then you would have rural grade overspill into Wollongong. ABA of the past would probably approve this.
In regards to your second question, ABA’s planning of the past allowed decent overspill. CRA and ACMA 's current approach is to not allow overspill where possible.
Power fm specs are probably wrong under the current planning approach. If it was to be licensed today it would most likely be from Cambewarra Mountain at possibly 30KW OD. This would provide similar coverage within the licence area, and less overspill into Wollongong.
When Power fm launched in 1990 there was only the 30m tower at Cambewarra Mountain with limited space. That tower has recently been demolished, and now all broadcasting services come from the 70m tower which will also include the proposed 2ST service.
Wave and i98 would be the same. With todays planning approach if the Brokers Nose tower had adequate space, i98 and Wave would probably broadcast from there. Only tv and the national fm stations would broadcast from Knights Hill, this is clear from the dab+ planning for the region.
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Power FM was actually launched in October 1991.
Also, back then, the ABA’s predecessor, the ABT, was the one that planned & granted the licence. (ABA replaced ABT in October 1992)
I was down in the Illawarra yesterday, and was testing out the existing Cambewarra Mountain frequencies on my parents’ Subaru Forester. The conclusion is that those services, which transmit at 1kW towards Wollongong, isn’t received well on it, although given that 91.7 2ST will be 5 times more powerful from a higher end of the tower compared to the existing services, it may well be receivable towards a fair chunk of the Illawarra.
Even at just 5 watts, the 2ST’s Kiama repeater would be heard pretty well across at least the southern half of the Illawarra on a good radio, especially given that Saddleback Mountain is around 530m ASL at its summit, and can be seen across much of the region.
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Bingo. I think the NAUTEL coverage map is a little too conservative where 88.5 is concerned. The 5 kW map is pretty spot on, though, with a wedge of signal extending up the coast towards the eastern suburbs, and patches of signal to the east of Bungendore and around Lake George.
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Thanks for clearing that up, I remember it being around that time.
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Congratulations @TV-Expert for correctly predicting that Cambewarra Mountain is the proposed tx location for 2STs FM conversion. Ultimately its the breakaway Southern Highlands service which would have led to that proposal, which from a technical point of view is a standalone station with the “fader up” on the codec feed from Nowra most of the time. If moving 91.7 to Knights Hill means removing the various FM repeaters and subsequently 102.9 Bowral, then they are better off under with the current ACMA proposal.
In any case, Knights Hill is not the bee all end all of coverage to the 2ST license area. While I agree these AM to FM conversions should be co-sited and take on the tech specs of the existing s39 FMs, Power FMs coverage across the whole area isn’t great. It struggles in the Southern Highlands and on the Princess Hwy between Nowra and Shellharbour its full of multipath. Rhema Gosford actually gets over it permanently on one part of Kiama bends. I was down there on Saturday and coming into Gerringong something (probably an LED sign or something) was able to wipe it out altogether for about 100m.
I guess for those of us in Sydney, one advantage is that if Coast FM Gosford do Move to 91.7, 2ST at Cambewarra won’t wipe it out across most of Sydney and 2ST can still be heard on 102.9. A shame for people of the Illawarra who might have got another Knights Hill pseudo Illawarra station, I guess this proposed infill repeater on 88.5 will be that to a limited extent.
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I agree.
Will you place this in a submission to ACMA?
I believe if its s.39 equivalent covers the area on one frequency, then for ACMA to ensure efficient use of spectrum, they allocate the same for 2ST and switch off all the translators including their loophole station in the Southern Highlands. If they want FM, those days are over of split programming.
This is interesting. I believe at the time, the plan was for more generous overspill to ensure FM matched AM as best as possible which had far better coverage in the lower noise environment of the late 80’s and 90’s.
And there is the shortsightedness in this age of the internet.
Correct. My feeling is that planning is flawed, not spectrally efficient and financially unviable for regional broadcasters. It should be scrapped.
Great contributions from all, enjoying the discussion.
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Welcome to finding a technical solution for what ostensibly is a political problem and in some respects, I can understand why both parties want to limit overspill - but it raises a broader issue, a licence area should be ‘practically’ serviced by the services that are licenced to it, by pushing a “limit overspill” approach you potentially start to clip the edges of the licence area away from the practical coverage - in some areas this results in a small loss in listeners - but in a market like Nowra this could be significant given there are populated areas on the fringes of the licence area.
Spectrum inefficiency works in CRA’s favour - it limits the incumbent broadcasters from potentially gaining competing services. The second point though is an interesting one - I cant imagine that ACMA develop these ‘proposals’ in a vacuum, if they are unviable, the broadcasters is almost contributing to their potential financial decline
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Personally, and I’m probably more on a rant than anything, but I think the ‘limit overspill at all costs approach’ frankly sucks, especially in regional areas with limited choices.
Think about it from the audience’s perspective, the increased choice is generally only a good thing, especially when there’s only two local commercial stations to choose from.
Does anyone in Ballarat object to being able to listen to Bendigo stations? No. Does anyone in Geelong object to being able to listen to Melbourne stations? Absolutely not! So why can’t there be a pragmatic approach to overspill, such that it doesn’t have to be managed to the nth degree (don’t answer that because I already know it)
I just think that stations should be able to broadcast in a sensible, cost-and-spectrum-effective way to service their area. If they overspill a bit into the neighbouring licence area, let’s deal with it. But some notable instances aside it’s barely a problem, except for the self-interested broadcasters looking to protect their own patch, and unfortunately they dictate terms in this
So in the 2ST case, I’d agree, let them broadcast from Knights Hill, don’t let them overtly overspill into Wollongong, but if they happen to a bit, just accept it - they are after all the neighbouring market!
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Indeed. In fact, the Nowra licence area has a better variety of music between its two commercial radio stations (as they are both owned by the same company) than that of the larger Wollongong market with its two commercial stations that compete with one another.
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Have you come down with a case of ‘Mango Madness’ from the Brisbane humidity?
I do think they have gone a bit anal, for lack of a better word, with overspill protection. You can somewhat understand the laissez faire approach taken with Power FM in 1991, where a whole wad of spectrum was suddenly freed from the vice of WIN4. Don’t forget they were the first FM commercial station in the Illawarra, just beating 2WL/Wave FM and 2OO/i98 to the punch. Power FM certainly maintained a strong presence in Wollongong throughout the 90s; there was a Warrawong sales office I believe.
I’ll let Steve Winwood have the final say on the matter:
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I recall Power even outrated both 2WL and 2OO in the first Wollongong survey after Power first went to air.
I had a cousin who lived in the Southern Highlands in the early 90s and she had written a list of the 8 FM stations that she had presetted on her Hi-Fi … At Preset # 1 was “Power FM Wollongong” when it was really her local Coast and Highlands station.
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