Went to scan my radios this morning to search for new stations and Brisbane DAB Perfect but GC DAB is there but no stations showing up on it. Checked the SDR the carrier is there and the radios i havent scanned have Gold Coast signals but the anything ive rescanned they are missing… What an odd occurence!
Edit 22/09: Went to the Gold Coast for a day trip today and my car radio would not pick up the local dab stations. Although some it had preset from when i used to live there are showing up. However when the radio hit 9D mpx it couldnt show other stations… same behaviour on my sangean… it would stop on 9C but now station list would download and my jbl tuner 2 could not even see the mpx.
However when the radios had presets from that mpx they showed up and worked…
Almost like the mpx is there and working but when a radio scans it cant see whats in the multiplex.
Had a day off yesterday. There has been no change to the Brisbane array nor output.
Still weaker than expected at Scarborough/Newport.
Beerwah seems to be quite on the fringe of coverage in at the foothills of the Glasshouse Mtns.
Drive to elevation and it’s a different story.
Gold Coast digital easily received from about 300m heading up towards Maleny. Any south facing slope on that east/west ridge results in consistent reception of Gold Coast digital. Brisbane too.
Tested out Gold Coast DAB south on the way down to Coffs Harbour today.
Had brief dropouts on the Gold Coast just north of Tallebudgera Creek, in the Airport Tunnel and the first of the twin tunnels on the Pacific Hwy near Cudgen Rd, but started to get regular dropouts after that and it was pretty much gone completely by Round Mountain.
Is Sutherland “on”? Be good to hear from someone who lives around Oatley to confirm or check . Redfern is not on the list so that is gone (it was reported by @RFBurns )
Similarly I did not think there was a repeater in Canberra also Hobart too.
I can confirm Sutherland is on, it’s located at Jannali, top of the hill not far from the Woronora bridge, TXA owns & I operate/maintain all of those DAB transmitters listed in Sydney & Melbourne except the main ABC ones.
Yes Redfern is gone, a long time ago. The building it was on was renovated (either knocked down/rebuild or had extensions put on top to make it higher) & it was found the Redfern site wasn’t needed, it was adequately covered by Centrepoint Tower & Artarmon.
The only new DAB site in Melbourne which is currently in final planning/pre build stage is at Arthur’s Seat.
No plans for any other DAB sites.
While it’s within the Melbourne DTV Licence area, it’s right on the edge of the Melbourne Radio licence area & a transmitter around Belgrave would likely spill out of licence area & with DAB that possibility was engineered not to happen right from the start.
I don’t recall this being discussed before - but have wondered why Adelaide doesn’t have a DAB repeater for the Foothills (as one exists for FM and Digital TV).
Is it possible that it would need to run at a significant enough power to cover that area that it could interfere with the main Mt Lofty transmissions? (as by comparison Foothills FM is 2kw vs 20-32kw for Mt Lofty).
Is there one tech across the board for community DAB+ that creates the dynamic text for community radio?
As I have seen this exact style of text across a few community stations now.
Got some new DAB+ software up and running - QIRX. I like it! Information overload!
I don’t have a vertical DAB antenna up at the moment but my horizontal FM antenna can just hear Mandurah DAB 100 km away. The signal to noise ratio (SNR) comes in at 5 to 6 db - an extremely weak signal, but provides a great demonstration of Coast FMs superior EEP 1A error protection.
In comparison -
EEP 2A needs SNR of 8 db for reliable decoding
EEP 3A needs 11 db
EEP 4A needs 14 db
And FM needs about the same - with quiet backgroud stereo hiss.
What is The Wave using? When I was testing The Wave vs Coast the difference only became apparent at the margins, very weak both are off the air, just weak both are OK, it has to be quite weak!
