I presume they have the same guy that does the promos for all the other stations? I hear him doing 91.1 Hot FM Sunshine Coast and River 949 Ipswich, and when I go back to Geelong I hear him talking on K-Rock too. I can’t imagine Tassie is any different.
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Schmango? Ben Harrison, who was M&R’s voiceover/imaging producer I hear on quite a few ARN stations, originally on Hot Tomato and as that station was acquired, spread further.
PM Albanese was in Frankston on Sunday, media conference in his South Sydney Rabbitohs cap, didn’t he look a fish out of water in AFL heartland. A lack of attention to detail.
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Don’t know the names, sorry. But the guy with the slightly raspy voice (whether that’s put on or not). Yes he is heard on Hot Tomato also.
Great way to feel like you ahve an individual, local station when the voiceovers are the same in another station 1500km away 
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Have noticed that Moyra and Big Trev (drive show from Hot Tomato) are airing on ARN Regional CHRs from 3am (at least Chilli and Sea FM Tas).
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I know there is some ducting forecast for today and over the next few days, but it looks like 102.9 2ST’s new transmitters has finally gone live and back to full power at 2KW ERP.
This morning at 5:00 am I was receiving a noisy stereo signal for 2ST on 102.9 on my hifi dx setup, I just put it down to strong Tropo.
When I checked again at 3:30pm this afternoon the signal strength was the same and there was no noticeable enhancements of any other signals.
This is the first time in over two years that I have been able to receive 2ST at it’s original strength. It is at similar strengths to 94.9 Power fm which is also a noisy stereo signal.
Let’s go around the grounds is anyone else noticing the improved signal at the moment?
@dxnerd @TheChase @ozbark @Radiohead
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Nothing obvious peaking through Triple M Newcastle here yet. Will try again later tonight and over the weekend.
I’ll have to keep an eye on it.
I noted early this morning that I was easily decoding RDS from it & signal appeared stronger & again this evening similar results.
The stereo encoder attributes look the same or near identical as late last year.
Yes there’s a lot of tropo forecast that extends inland a bit & for the south coast next several days. I’ve had slightly enhanced Orange & Canberra reception recently.
Looked at their RDS again. The only changes I can see is they have removed 102.9 from their RDS AF as a filler & the CT is now current, was delayed by an hour when I last looked, whenever that was.
I am receiving a perfect 0% BER on their RDS at the moment.
Will have to monitor during the middle of the day & when there’s no tropo enhancement at all.
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I think it is now safe to say that the new transmitter for 102.9 2ST is live and back to full power again. Getting similar reception to yesterday, with no enhancements between my location Knights Hill, and Bowral.
At the moment 2ST is slightly stronger than Power fm which is as at its weakest level normally experienced in strong westerlies.
The new transmitter for 2ST and it going live has been a long time coming. Here is basically the timeline of events from memory.
We first noticed significant reception differences in Sydney around two years ago, this is when we first reported it. At the time they could not find any issue. We contacted them again when their signal strength dropped even lower below Highlands fm and the now defunct Music fm.
@anon71206228 then found out through his contacts that the transmitter was stuffed and they were running at half power 1KW until they got the replacement transmitter.
If my hunch is correct the new transmitter went live and back to full power in the early hours of Friday morning, this is when I went from no reception to my current weak stereo reception.
With the signal back to full strength again I am looking forward to some decent Tropo between here and the Highlands, full RDS decode??
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Hope you’re right. I didn’t check past five hours.
Right now at 1631hours LT great signal from 102.9 2ST, but 107.1 is also coming in strongly with RDS & slight enhancement to Canberra. Everywhere else outside of the local area signals are either weaker than normal or showing nil enhancement. 
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I am pretty confident on this one as the signal levels have remained constant over the past 36 hours which makes me think this is the new norm.
Btw what is the db readings you are currently getting for 2ST, and how does it compare with what you had until recent?
No Canberra enhancements here in NW Sydney yet.
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I’ve got no past signal strength readings unfortunately, but from memory on what the signal usually looked like in the SDR re waveform & levels. It appears that the signal looks some 7 - 10dB stronger. It’s difficult to get current stable reading from SDR# software, but signal peaking with music at around -82dBFS & SNR of around 26dB, these figures are higher during speech.
Using the TEF rx inside I get a signal of around 30dB & SNR of 23dB.
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what’s enhancement mean – i’m not a techie
The enhancements we are referring to is signal ducting. How they work, ducts form in the troposphere which are inversions. These inversions form under High pressure systems and typically over land in Winter when you have cold air under warmer air.
In summer it is cooler air underneath warmer air above, normally it is the Seabreeze that sets it off in coastal areas.
These ducts bend fm and tv signals and allow them to be received out of area in locations that they normally would not.
The most common, garden variety of Tropo as us nerds call it is Newcastle fm radio into Wollonong, or the other way around. When this happens it can cause major signal disruptions to local tv, unfortunately both Wollonong and Newcastle Tv share the same frequencies.
The most common inland fm ducting is Canberra / Goulburn into Sydney which can happen in both Winter and Summer.
The most intense ducts which form under heat wave conditions can even carry NZ fm signals to Australia, with them being received recently in Sydney and along the mid north coast.
This is how fm signals can be enhanced.
There is a thread on mediaspy called AM and FM dxing, which stands for long distance listening. You can find out more information on this there if that interests you.
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Thank you (Sir? Ant = Anthony?)
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“We can’t understand why Spotify is so popular” - Station executives
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In 1984, the jukebox/pokies machine combo approach worked for those cheapskates.
In 2024, with Pandora, Spotify and thousands of stations online? It no longer does.
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You have to wonder if plant and equipment maintenance is even being done now at some of these transmission sites? 2ST running on reduced power for a long period tends to say there is nobody who can fix PA modules/replace MOSFETs and possibly no working standby transmitter. Buying a whole new transmitter is an expensive fix for a PA fault but sometimes unavoidable if the faulty transmitter is very old.
It’s not just ARN either - SRN apparently had 4GY on low power for quite a while and a rather easy to diagnose fault like one of the 2AD masts falling down(ever heard of inspecting guys and anchors?).
None of this is any surprise with many of the old techs having stopped working in radio and TV due to the terrible pay and conditions or only being able to get work off an ABN number. New entrants usually don’t last long before they head to greener pastures either or get laid off.
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It was only the 2ST translator in the Southern Highlands that was low power, not the main site, so nothing particularly major & half power isn’t really an issue locally, only affected those in extreme out of market areas wanting to DX, & as a translator, no need for extra cost of backup.
As for SRN, there’s limited techs work for the company & they don’t get paid much so traveling around the network is quite a cost, which they probably have to bear themselves not the company, contract techs are probably in the same boat.
TXA moved to a modular repair system for TX’s about 6 - 7 years ago, component repairs is a thing of the past, it’s quicker, easier, cheaper to modular replace parts with a spare then send the faulty back to manufacture for component repair (with warranty), or chuck it in the e-waste bin, we can still component repair for fun, & for old TX’s that you can’t get spares for, but mostly just pull the part out, & put a new one in, job done, move onto the next one.
BAI still send faulty parts to the Bald Hills Repair centre, but that’s barely hanging on from what I hear, not going to post why in here.
While for TXA, Nautel is great & easy to get support & spare parts out of, R&S Australia are also now looking to move to a modular repair system, so if anything needs repairing, it has to be sent back to the Germany factory at huge cost, rather than to the Sydney repair centre & as far as Harris/Gates Air, everyone at TXA hopes those TX’s blowup beyond repair so we can get rid of them once & for all, spares & tech support is an arse to get & component repairs have to be done on those, or using pilfered parts from decommissioned TX’s.
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