No chance unless really unusual tropical conditions. BTW getting a normal signal of 2ST on 102.9 from Pennant Hills enjoying the tail end of the 20 / 20 countdown.
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There’s been recent talk about the australian government converting “ALL” remaining AM stations to FM, something I found rather confusing as I thought they wouldn’t be the spectrum, but it seemed the government in their will (when they really want to do something) is pretty adament on doing so, however I couldn’t find any articles on this. A google search only got me as far as these articles which didn’t mention much. Just wondering if this was mentioned in a newspaper article / ACMA release or whatever, and if someone could please link to a source.
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I kinda know they want to do this, & I’ve heard reasons for doing so, but not sure how accurate it is?
I’ve heard the ADF (Australian Defence Forces) want as much MF & HF spectrum as they can get, to use for critical communications in case a war breaks out, radio communications in these bands can be quite robust & travel long distances, whereas other forms of long distance communications (satellite, internet, etc) can be blocked, corrupted, taken over, or just plain taken out.
Also in times of war, parts could be hard or impossible to come by, to repair or make highly technical communications. Going back to basic radio communications that are known to work & work well are paramount & just plain sensible.
I’ve also heard that some parts of the HF spectrum the ADF do have, can’t be used because of interference from other broadcast stations harmonics.
I was told 3rd hand, so don’t know how accurate this info is?
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It will mean suburban community radio stations will need to be removed in Sydney to fit the stations in. Which would be unfortunate. Allow them to be on DAB but then the coverage would be all of Sydney which defeats the purpose.
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Ultimately I think with electric cars looming (and the RF interference from that in the AM band) and the every increasing amount of RF garbage being spewed in general from household electronics it is inevitable that the AM band will eventually have to be mostly phased out.
The fact that it is of great value to the defence force in these uncertain geopolitical times is also a bonus, especially with it’s robustness and propagation properties.
Even if AM were phased out though I would like to see the ABC high power local radio signals maintained (even if they have their frequencies moved to accommodate defence), you could have a couple of blocks allocated from say 540-720khz and 1440-1530khz (for tropical areas where the higher frequencies work better). These signals play a vital role for emergency broadcasting and in remote areas and I’d argue keeping them actually serves a significant civil defence purpose as well.
As far as accommodating everything onto the current FM band, my suggested approach would be to start afresh and restack everything. Things I would do combine the national ABC’s onto 2 or 3 single frequency networks each, move across all remaining community and commercial stations (giving them and the national ABCs priority) and then offering anything left over to narrowcasters on a highest bidder pays basis. Might still be an issue in areas such as Greater Sydney and South East Queensland with congestion but with proper spectrum planning and perhaps moving some suburban stations to the current LPON spectrum would alleviate this.
Combine this with a proper DAB rollout across larger regional areas at a bare minimum as a place for narrowcast services to go and this could be done without too much disruption or loss of listening choice.
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Even in the home, devices that traditionally contained an AM/FM tuner (clock radios, AVRs, Hi-Fi mini & micro systems) have either now omitted the AM component or the tuner entirely in favour of Bluetooth and/or AirPlay & Chromecast streaming.
A further worry, my local Big W now only stocks one model of DAB+ radio, a cheap and nasty unit whereas when launced in 2009 I bought my first DAB+ radio at a Big W which was the venerable Pure One Classic.
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That is correct the Sydney suburban community radio stations would need to go as well as two high powered community stations.
The other option is to remove one high powered community, and SEN to fit on to the Sydney 800khz spacing.
If SEN was to stay there would be no spectrum left for SEN track so that would have to combined with the programming of SEN Sports.
LPON’s would need to go too to allow maximum allocations between 87.5-107.9mhz
One option is to create SFNs for the national ABC networks, that should help make room available.
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Would that work with the high powered Sydney / Newcastle / Wollongong national fm’s and would that put the mush zones over the Central Coast?
Also that reduces the spacing to 400khz for the ABC SFN’s in the other markets if Newcastle and Wollongong were to SFN with Sydney for Classic / RN / News Radio / Triple J.
I would like to know where they will fit Double J if labor is still proposing to move that to fm too?
I’m putting money on it not happening
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Same
First broken election promise
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Bit early to come to that conclusion. It’s week two.
Yeah, strange, I thought the government would just commondere the spectrum when the country officially is pronounced as being in a war footing. But the missing component in this discussion is the adition of DRM.
I think the commercials and the community radio stations could co exist fine on FM. Keep the commercial radio stations where they’re presently are (any large or wholesale change will make them spit the dummy, so don’t disturb these waters), and community radio stations keep broadcasting on their medium power allocations, so they keep within their local area. If congestion is an issue, then stations like SEN Sports and SEN track should merge into the one station and consolidate program material as it’s of a similar nature. The ABC’s could be consolidated into “sections” of the AM band for freeing up the rest of the AM spectrum for defence. This takes care of all community, commercial and government broadcasting.
As DAB+ is mostly operated by commercial radio, one would be best suited to leave as is, to again minimise interuption, and as for LPONs and HPONs, section this tier of radio off FM on to DRM, and classify it as independent radio, and restrict it’s ability to network, for preventing the license hoarding problems associated with the current LPON model.
Independent broadcasters should then be able to access the DRM spectrum, where with the much higher capacity, licenses are appointed under a OFCOM model to a variety of different operators. Rather then the highest bidder, licenses would be granted toward groups and individuals who can demonstrate a service that offers different program material that is not being served by the mainstream media, with such, they would need to consistantly display such points of differences in their on air content in order of successfully gaining a license.
Not everything should be left up to the highest bidder as it distorts the current radio offerings.
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Its unfortunate, I am about to get an iphone and this app has been deleted from the App Store. What a shame.
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To be fair, it hasn’t been updated in quite a while. For instance, it still has 2ST on 999AM, even though it had been converted to FM early last year. Also, it still has the 2ST 91.7 translator at Huskisson as being on-air.
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True. Radio National is still 107.7 FM in Crookwell. I have the app on my ipad.
I think it would of used an api of some description to update the data from ACMA site without manually needing to be updated. It doesn’t seem to “delete” stations but at least it will add stations. Even with some of the data wrong it is just handy and easy to see where the transmitter is on a map all contained within an app. Disappointing its “gone”. If you search for a similar app in the app stores, its all about streaming radio apps.
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2TLC Yamba is now on 93.5FM
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@Mechsta might like to enlighten us, but I think there’d be a bit of a Battle Royale between TLC and 2PM around Coffs. Though I suppose it would be no worse than the CCI on 103.9 from 2GF and 2WAY.
I think I remember reading that 103.9 2GF (Maclean) will switch off once 89.5 is active? 103.9 was probably deemed unsuitable because of 2WAY and 2CHY; a simple power increase for this ‘Maclean’ service would otherwise be the logical option. ***
***To my mind, 103.9 is basically a pseudo/back door FM conversion anyhow. It can be heard fine throughout most of the Grafton licence area. I think it is co-sited with 104.7; how did ACMA approve this translator?
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I went up to Boambee Headland this morning and 2PM was dominant the whole time. No trace of TLC at all.
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I reckon 2PM has the potential to cause some issues for 2TLC at the southern fringe of its area, though perhaps its coverage area only extends to around Angourie and not places like Wooli/Minnie Water.
I remember 100.3 was fair from Boambee Head, though a lot weaker than 2PM so I guess that result isn’t surprising.
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