If you look solely at population, Central Coast is the largest regional city without DAB, followed by the Sunshine Coast, Newcastle and then Wollongong.
I agree that Wollongong and Central Coast should be on different blocks, so that they can both have potentially high-powered services at some point in the future.
There are some interesting characters in the northern suburbs of Wollongong that’s for sure. It’s the only place I know of that has Housos by the beach (Bellambi). The funny thing is that once you get north of Bulli Pass, it’s millionaire’s row- at least these days.
I have checked out the access to Brokers Nose before; still accessible to anyone willing to do a short bush walk (or steal a tank from Holsworthy and drive it down the F6).
Would ARN activate the Katoomba frequency for Cada consider it is on air in Sydney, and fortuitous reception is quite good across most parts of the Blue Miuntains?
No, Newcastle is next after the Gold Coast, and ahead of Canberra. Then Sunshine Coast, Central Coast and Wollongong all pretty close.
There is a rock outcrop next to the Brokers Nose TV site that has a magnificent view over the escarpment and apparently it was popular with the locals. Once the TV went in they had it in for the place, then it got worse once the locked gate appeared.
I’ve been away for the last week and only just saw this development - very interesting.
Naturally I had to go for a wander today when I could, the results were fairly underwhelming to say the least. I had to go to my very good high spot in Chapel Hill just to tune the Gold Coast DAB in, and driving around I’d get the odd patch but nothing listenable. This compares to FMs from the same site that produces up to RDS-level reception in the same places. This is all on the Mitsubishi car radio.
I will be down on the Coast on Wednesday - I’ll try and listen on the M1 and see how well it behaves there. There are some weak spots for Mt Tamborine FM around Pimpama and the Helensvale exit where terrain is an issue, I wonder if DAB will help there or will struggle just as much (making it unlistenable rather than just noisy).
Only thing with that is in the Gold Coast, 25kW directional is at least equal to the FM’s, digital is supposed to be half or less power for same coverage as analogue, so what does that tell you with the DAB? Also how well does the DAB do around the tall buildings around Surfers Paradise, will they need a translator somewhere around there as well? You’re starting to lose the energy savings & purchase, install & ongoing operation & maintenance savings now running the same power as the FM’s & needing translators.
If Newcastle was to go 25kW with DAB from Mt Sugarloaf, that’d be more power than the FM’s, they’re only 20kW, & knowing where the FM’s suffer multipath &/or shadowing from hills, etc. even with 25kW from Mt Sugaloaf, I still don’t think it will cover Newcastle & Lake Macquarie, there’ll be at least 2 probably 3 or 4 translators at the same or similar sites to the DTV, (Highfields/Kotara, Belmont North, Warners Bay, Merewether is a maybe & you might get away without one at Port Stephens, but might not)?
Yes DAB is protected from multipath, but only to a point, most places I’ve listed would likely have multipath where it’s too strong & the reflected signal falls outside the allowable echo points, therefore being too much for the error correction to fix, very much similar to the DTV around the same areas.
And to add to that, most analogue FMs are mixed, so 20kw is really only 10kw horizontal and 10kw vertical, whereas DAB is vertical only.
Not really, it’s still 20kW in each vertical & horizontal, because you double the transmitter power for mixed over linear vertical or horizontal.
Say you have transmitter power of 5kW for 20kW ERP mixed, if that changed to linear vertical, you’d only need 2.5kW transmitter power for 20kW linear vertical.
Change from a linear vertical or horizontal to a mixed antenna & you drop 3dB or half power, so you need to double the transmitter power going into the antenna.
The figures I found were different as Central Coast includes parts of Lake Macquarie to the North and Hawkesbury River to the south.
Central Coast region population: 354,915 as of 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Coast_(New_South_Wales)
Sunshine coast region population: 351,424 as of 2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_Coast_Region
Newcastle population: 322,278 as of 2016 census
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle,_New_South_Wales
Wollongong population: 307,477 as of 2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollongong
EDIT: Greater Newcastle has a population of approx. 611,000. Fair enough, that will be ahead of the Central Coast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suburbs_in_Greater_Newcastle,_New_South_Wales
Yes metro population of Newcastle makes it significantly bigger than the others.
It’s also worth noting Geelong’s metro population is around 280,000 so it’s not that far off Sunshine Coast, Central Coast and Wollongong.
All of these areas are no brainers for DAB in my opinion because of their populations and also the fact they are bordering capital city metro areas with significant commuter traffic.
Absolutely but I think the technical restraints for so little gain is holding back it’s implementation. These are Low 5KW, power, multiple infills, sharing channel blocks with other close by markets. No overspill like on fm.
The Gold Coast got lucky with their specs being upgraded from a punny 5KW to 25KW. I cannot see this happened for Wollongong, Newcastle, Central Coast.
Central Coast would be the best chance for overspill into Sydney, Brokers Nose does not get into Sydney very well apart from the SE suburbs around Maroubra.
Newcastle would only be a chance with very strong tropo, provided C91.3 does not go dab+ and allows Newcastle to have their channel block all to themselves.
As an aside Mandurah DAB+ (but not the LAP!) also covers Rockingham and certainly the radio ads always target both areas. The combined population is around 220,000. Sort of makes sense since Mandurah itself is just under 90,000, it needs Rockingham to justify its radio existence. I guess Rockingham is forgotten by the rest of Perth (and in more ways than one).
Yes, it makes sense, population-wise, for these regional cities to be next in line for DAB.
I see 2UEs bit rate has dropped from 72 to 64 kbps… i wonder what has happened to those 8 missing bits.
It’s being mentioned on another Digital Radio thread that Masters Radio pop-up station has come on the air for the Masters golf tournament, replacing the Radio2GB stream. The bitrate for the pop-up station is 48kbps.
Thanks for that!
Masters Golf is also in Melbourne, bitrate 48Kbit/s, replacing Radio 3AW. Meanwhile, the other 3AW is down from 128Kbit/s to 80Kbit/s.
Is it on Nine Radio Perth?
What is the program source for The Masters?
