Broadcast Facilities

dutymainttech · May 23, 2023, 12:04pm

ABC and SBS would likely get to Soma Mt via satellite.

Nine might be fed with off-air from another site

hatdj · May 23, 2023, 12:10pm

A couple of months ago North West NSW had a major telstra outage that took out all commercial tv on Soma (NBN, NEN & NRN) and it also took out NRN (WIN 10) And NEN (Seven) from Dowe. 9NBN remained on air from Dowe during that outage so that suggests 9NBN have there own STL to Mt Dowe. And in the light of the current outage on Soma that would suggest 9NBN changed it receive tech on Mt Soma as well

dutymainttech · May 23, 2023, 4:05pm

Could well be the case - in some places there is fibre to an office in town(eg Launceston) and microwave up to the mountain top. That is also the case in some capital cities for the backup path.

NBN use a number of IBL(in band links) as well in that region: they are a low power UHF DTV transmitter and receiver fed into two gridpack high gain antennas one for the receiver and one for the transmitter. Due to the frequencies used they hop a lot further than pure microwave STL’s and have better rainfade figures. Viewers near those sites can also pick up the overspill from the transmit antenna and sometimes get a better signal than the main station for the area.

NBN’s techs in Newcastle used to maintain all that equipment but I am not sure they are even still there since the big NBN studio shutdown.

RFBurns · May 24, 2023, 3:38am

NBN still have techs in Newcastle (now based at Mt Sugarloaf I think), I think they also have some techs based in Coffs, & they still look after all those TX’s.

NBN still have & use a lot of the old Soul Patterson Telecoms Microwave Links (now TPG) for transmission distribution to transmitter sites, but yes, getting away from the big centres NBN have a lot of sites that are fed off air from another site (usually a high power main site), in some areas though NBN have a transmission site that is fed off air from another site, that is fed off air from a main site.

dutymainttech · May 24, 2023, 5:03am

Thanks for that - my last involvement in the region was back in the days of yore. You answered the question about why NBN may not have gone off due to them still being on the Soul Pattenson microwave.

BAI used to have 2 people out of Sugarloaf and NBN had 4 people at Mosbri CT - it was quite common to see NBN at places like Springbrook and Tamborine, so they got around a bit. Hopefully they all kept a job if they wanted it.

Bas_Tech · May 27, 2023, 4:53am

Above features the SCA Canberra office in Fyshwick, via Google Maps. This office was built in 2020, and this office is technically a broadcast facility, so it fits in this thread.