This site was being talked about late last year in a Facebook group “Transmitter Sites Of Australia”, apparently at that time the Chinese station it was leased to had stopped paying their bills a while before & the power was cut off to the site & that was the end of it.
The guy who “acquired” the site (his words) is local tech I believe but not sure, I don’t know him, said that sometime between mid last year & late last year when it was being talked about one of the masts fell down “believed to be accidental” but he wouldn’t say publicly.
Then a couple of months ago someone (on the same Facebook group) was asking if anyone had any spare AM transmitters & he said he had a 5kW one that was about to go to scrap, he was unsure of the condition of it though, working or not.
The way he was talking I think the site is probably being scraped, never to transmit again, maybe it has been, or will be sold for housing, (like most AM sites these days)?
Apparently the 2 masts that are/were there, aren’t the 3GL originals, they were pulled down & used at another site years ago, with new shorter ones installed at the site, but no one I’ve heard from knows why?
So a site that’s only got one of two masts (which presumably is engineered as a directional site needing both) and a transmitter that’s on the way out - I think we can guess that it’s unlikely anything ever broadcasts from Leopold again.
Interestingly, the 1341kHz HPON licence is licenced to serve both Geelong and Melbourne - a radius of 80km from the 3CR site at Hoppers Crossing. So I guess if there was interest in reusing it (possibly limited these days), it could go to air at one of the existing AM sites in the Melbourne area instead of staying in Geelong?
First part, yes I’d guess so, this is what I’m expecting from what I’ve heard about the site (current state).
Second part, yes 1341kHz could go to air from one of the other existing Melbourne AM sites as long as it was engineered to meet points 1 & 2 of the licence special conditions.
How costly or even possible that might be is anyone’s guess at this stage, & would it be even worth trying to do it for a HPON, (if it was a commercial AM I’d say yes, but an AM HPON probably no, unless it was going to be a horse racing or god squad station, where costs don’t seem to matter & money flow is seemingly endless).
I don’t think it’d make a difference, this is AM we’re talking about not FM, 1341’s 18kHz bandwidth goes from 1332 to 1350kHz, 1377’s 18kHz bandwidth goes from 1368 to 1386kHz, there’s another full 18kHz bandwidth channel in between them on 1359kHz.
AM transmission works a lot differently to FM there’s no way you could over-modulate an AM transmitter that much, without severely breaking the licence rules & damaging the transmitter to get splash over & adjacent channel interference (which it’s actually not, as there’s a full channel spacing between them).
The only real way you’d get both interfering with each other is if one or both were pumping more than 9kHz of audio into the transmitter, then the channel bandwidth used would increase, theoretically both could pump 15kHz of audio (same as FM, but the AM transmitter may not actually work as it would be limited for protection to stop damage to itself) into the transmitter making a channel bandwidth of about 30kHz wide.
FM can have unlimited sidebands, modulation/deviation limits how wide a channel bandwidth is, along with frequency filtering on the output.
AM channel bandwidth depends largely on the audio input frequency bandwidth as to the output channel bandwidth, generalisation, output bandwidth is double audio input, across an upper & lower sideband for a mono signal, AM Stereo works a little differently being C-QUAM or having the L+R & L-R channels Quadrature Phase Modulated.
Protection to 1377 would already be built into the licence directional pattern specifications, you’d be hard pressed to stop an AM signal across the bay without severely limiting it to start with, though that would’ve been more back in the day to stop 3GL a Geelong commercial Station broadcasting into the Melbourne or Mornington Peninsular markets.
If it was to move to an Eastern Melbourne site that pattern would probably have to change a little bit, though with it now being an HPON covering Geelong & Melbourne & not a Geelong only commercial licence, essentially you’re only now protecting 1341kHz Newcastle & any station on or around the same frequency internationally that might be affected by night time Sky Wave propagation.
Krock may as well rebrand to 3GL, it isn’t a rock station anymore, they could reformat to fit Bay’s audience and Bay could become the Power FM equivalent.
Changing the formats of both stations could be confusing to listeners… it may be easier to move the BAY FM name to 95.5 and leave that format as is, and put the 3GL name on 93.9
I imagine the 3GL transmitter would have had restrictions to the east for sure, so presuming the arrangement used by the HPON was similar then it would have maintainted that protection to 3MP. Though the 1341 signal was always fairly good across Melbourne from my memory, given the path is almost all water.
It’s a pity another use couldn’t have been identified for the 1341 site. A perfect scenario might have seen RPH Geelong shift over to AM which could have freed up another FM frequency in town, like what they did in Warrnambool. Now though, as you say, would any group out there have any desire to put 1341 to use as an HPON, given it would have to be established at a new site? There’s already two racing stations in Melbourne, so it would really only be the god squad that might have any use for it (in which case I’d rather the frequency remain blank). The ABC could have used it too, but their intention was always to start on FM in Geelong (hence why it still hasn’t happened 20+ years on now).
And another question, assuming the licence remains inactive for so long, does it then get ‘surrendered’ (for lack of a better term) to ACMA? It’s still technically owned by Geelong Broadcasters, but is there a use it or lose it clause with these?
I remember many years ago getting a clear signal on 3GL over at Rye on the Mornington Peninsula. Super close to 3MP on the dial but I guess 3MP was still just as clear as the closer/stronger signal.
If only those walls could talk. Young Talent Time, The Box, Thank God You’re Here and countless other shows produced in that building. Still looks like a good facility.
A few werks ago we (North West NSW) lost all telstra service and we lost WIN 10 and Prime from Mt Dowe so its quite obvious that Media Hub is sent out via a data link whilst NBN, ABC & SBS stayed on air so that suggests they still have traditional broadcast link paths
Nice find and good video. In the first bits, you can glance to the right and see what IIRC is the old MCR that was part of Seven’s national play-out facility from 2002 - 2019 with those monitors and large glass windows, a wooden floor atrium and spiral staircase beyond the other glass and this HSV-7 control room featured may have been one of those other MCR rooms (audio, tech or some other broadcast team role) that you used to be able to see through a partially opaque opening/window with more monitors to the left as the background live graphic during Seven’s national news bulletins in the 2000s, which you can also see in this video extending further to the back (past that wall with the “7” on it) - @MBB@BJT2 might be able to understand what I’m getting at and clarify?
