No one calls it A49 Scenic Drive. It’s just Central Coast Highway. We don’t use the route designation.
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The Central Coast is just horrible with ABC services, relying on outside frequencies for a majority of its services.
The only local ABC transmitters being 92.5: ABC Local Radio and 98.1: ABC News Radio, both of which have marginal reception at best.
As for everything else it’s either fringe reception from Sydney or Newcastle.
Since the Central coast is so large we should have every ABC service on a local frequency even if a lot of it is on AM which in almost completely unused here.
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It’s a similar situation in other provincial markets that are adjacent to metro areas.
Geelong doesn’t have ANY local ABC transmissions at all, everything is from Melbourne.
Sunshine Coast doesn’t have a local Radio National at the southern, and doesn’t have a local Triple J at the northern end.
Ballarat, Bendigo and the Gippsland region all don’t have a local Radio National either.
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Bathurst too doesn’t have a local ABC. The Lithgow frequency is extremely low power , I don’t how well 94.1 gets into town. The main transmitter for 549 am is over 100 km away at Cumnock, perhaps the signal is reasonable most of the time.
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549 can be heard quite well across a lot of the state. It has a large coverage area.
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Yes its my goto frequency on Thursday night for they footy in Sydney along with 738am. That is when ABC Illawarra is misbehaving.
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I know, I just wanted to make it clear which road I was talking about 
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I wonder if the ABC’s high powered from Sydney and Newcastle were to increase their power to 150kw towards the Central Coast how much difference it would make for Classic fm and Triple J?
I know this does not help ABC local radio, RN and News Radio.
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The Melbourne services easily cover the whole of Geelong and beyond. There’s no benefit to be gained from also having local services.
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Local news and info on an ABC Local Radio Geelong would be good, Same as what Gold, Sunshine and Central Coasts have.
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Agree, it has always been odd how Geelong was never allocated a local abc service despite those other markets of similar distance to capital city have one. Think it’s been a mix of geography where line of sight to Melbourne is flat over bay with no hills or terrain that would impact signal and culturally Melbourne and Geelong are more closely bundled together than other provincial markets
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I wonder if this would work on the Central Coast to increase the number of ABC services
and to eliminate CCI with Wollongong.
Move Coast fm from 96.3 to 91.7 and keep at 2KW
Install Triple J CC on 96.3 2KW SFN with Middle Brother.
ABC CC stay on 92.5 power increase to 2KW
ABC News radio move from 98.1 to 94.7, power increase to 2KW, SFN with Middle Brother.
Install ABC RN on 97.1, 2KW, SFN with Middle Brother.
The CCI for Coast fm and News Radio are resolved, however the new CC ABC’s are only 200khz away from high powered Sydney fm frequencies. The Sydney fm stations are outside of their licence area so they don’t have to be protected. Maybe these new CC ABC services may have a 500W restriction towards Sydney.
What are people thoughts?
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I’d move it to 90.9 fm SFN with the gong.
Move it to 102.1 FM and ABC Classic on 106.1 FM. You could also consider moving JJJ Wollongong and ABC classic so go on the same frequency. Then allow another commercial license in the gong. Also ABC news radio to FM on 90.9 in Newcastle.
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Moving Coast FM & then putting Triple J CC on 96.3 would work quite well I think, if I turn Coast FM off triple J Taree is quite strong in many parts of the central coast, it’s even fooled me at the transmitter site when I turned Coast FM off, but the off air monitors still had a strong program & I thought it hadn’t gone off, but listening carefully turned out it was just Triple J taken over the airwaves.
I wouldn’t put Triple J CC on 102.1 or classic on 106.1, it’ll cause too many issues at the North end of the CC if the SFN gets slightly out of time, I’d just make Triple J & Classic Newcastle 150kW or 200kW up from the current 80kW ERP.
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That could work (except for 94.7 with Rhema on 94.9), an SFN with Wollongong on 90.9, 95.7 and 98.9 could work too and avoid any 200 khz issues with Sydney. And you maintain the 800 khz spacing across the Coast.
If the racing/sports station allocated for 747am doesn’t get to air, they could put RN on that?
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Yeah this is even better! You could also pump up the ABC transmitters in Sydney. How about 90.9 FM on the coast then? Move ABCs FM stations in the Gong to 106.1 FM/102.1 FM to free up some frequencies in the Gong.
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I actually did this exercise through the Nautel coverage tool and increased the power of both Gore Hill and Mt Sugarloaf to 150KW towards the Central Coast. In most places you would have rural grade coverage or better from either Sydney or Newcastle. In some places where Sydney had below rural grade Newcastle covered it well. There were some spots on the Central Coast that had poor coverage from both.
@RFBurns could 200khz spacing from Sydney work on the Central Coast for this proposed allocation ?
95.5 ABC radio CC
96.3 Triple j
97.1 Radio National
97.9 News Radio
98.7 ABC Classic fm
2KW directional 200W restriction towards Sydney from one of the towers at Somersby.
The adjacent channel interference would annoy CC listeners of Smooth, Nova, and SBS radio which are received quite well across the CC, but fortuitous signals aren’t protected anyway.
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That could work, but I’d prefer 400kHz separation 96.3 Coast FM gets hit hard from Triple J Taree, but the South end of the Coast it can also get hit by 96.1 Cada, so the others could be similar.
At 200Khz separation you’re butting up the edges of each channel & if one or both don’t strictly adhere to 75Khz deviation they’ll start to interfere with each other, especially being physically close to each other (distance Sydney to Gosford) & at high enough powers to reach into each others markets being that close.
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Since it has some different content to Taree, that could be an issue.
The others could work but as above only being 200 khz off Sydney could be an issue, particularly on older receivers.
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No worse then Coast fm and Triple J.
Most of the time it will be similar programming so it is a compromise at best.
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