Had a dental appointment at Springwood in the Blue Mountains today so took up my Pure Move portable Fm/Dab+ radio for the trip to do some Dxing.
In Springwood Dab+ reception on the Pure Move was equivalent to my reception at home in Stanhope Gardens, Block 9a was the weakest.
On fm on the portable the locals 99.5 and 101.1 could only just be received at this location.
At Wentworth Falls at the Edge 96.1/ Move 99.5/2LT 101.1 tower Dab+ reception was not possible at the base of the tower on the portable, but as you moved away from the tower all Sydney Assembles could be received again, but the signal was quite variable.
While at the Wentworth Falls tower I spent some time observing the Move / 2LT broadcast antenna. It looks to be about 20m up the tower, below the mobile phone panel antennas. It is a 3 element Fm Yagi antenna mounted vertically on the western side of the tower. The directional antenna and the tower obviously limit the signal to the east.
By experimenting with my portable on 99.5 I could even see signal reduction by walking from the west side to the east of the tower, e.g with the headphone antenna unplugged the signal indicator showed full strength on the western side, and dropped down to 75% on the eastern side.
With the headphone antenna on the portable 99.5 was mainly received in mono by Hazelbrook 3x towns away from the broadcasting tower. How can these services be economical as the Sydney fm’s and 96.1 boom across the Blue Mountains and the signal is so restricted to the east?
My last stop on the way home was at the ARN monopole tower at Hawkesbury heights to sample the DAB+ broadcasts from that tower.
I can confirm that assemblies 9a and 9b are being rebroadcasted from the Hawkesbury Heights tower but 9C is still not on air from this site. At the base of the tower the rebroadcasted services could be received at 100% signal strength and quality with no antenna on the portable whereas 9C could not be received when the headphone antenna was removed from the portable.
The DAB+ services from Hawkesbury Heights could be received strongly from Castlereagh to Agnes Bank, however reception in Richmond was still patchy with the combination of Hawkesbury Heights and Artarmon.
Maybe they should have gone Kurrajong Heights over Hawkesbury Heights for the DAB+ translator?
Great post! I agree RE the location of the repeater or at least they need to increase the power. It was the same as when I drove there previously. Very interesting RE the 2LT & Move repeaters.
To anyone here that’s still looking for a good classic rock station after classic rock digital shut down have a look at q107 Classic rock it’s a station out of USA just listening to it now it’s Really good and had a scroll through their playlist it’s a good classic rock playlist
Got an answer from ACMA. “Basically it may be in the radio station’s best commercial interest to maintain the technical standard which is most accessible to the audience. However as it is not part of the broadcast license condition, it is outside of ACMA’s remit which encoding technology a station choose to broadcast on.”
Interesting eh? I wonder if it should be like this. When the radio does not work people tend to blame digital radio rather than the broadcaster. Happy they responded though.
I think that would be more for the likes of Commercials Radio Australia to dictate. For example they could dictate that all their members uses a particular technical standard. The ACMA isn’t concerned if a particular technology is succesful, their job is just to facilitate it being available for broadcasters to use.
"Modulation schemes
The Australian digital radio service is planned to reference modulation parameters of
Transmission Mode I and Protection Level 3 using differentially encoded Quadrature Phase
Shift Keying (D-QPSK), as defined in the ETSI standard ETSI EN 300 401 V1.4.1. A DRMT
licensee may elect to operate with other modulation parameters to improve coverage or capacity. However, the licensee will not be entitled to protection greater than that afforded by
the reference modulation. "
Seems like a digital-only commercial radio station won’t work as a profitable entity.
Today’s Melbourne Herald-Sun states that EON Sports Radio is in financial trouble. Mentions on-air personnel not being paid for months, and none of the promised commentary of various soccer matches. Only live programming is between 7 and 7 Monday to Friday.
2CH and the two Sunshine Coast stations are majority owned by Oceania Capital Partners with Wheatley having a 5% interest, while EON Sports Radio is majority owned by John Wall of troubled education outfit Acquire Learning with Wheatley having a minority interest. The companies are not linked, but Wheatley is the public face of both.
EON should have opened the lines ~ like Radio Sport. If there’s one thing sports fans love as much as watching sport or listening to it - it’s talking about it.
and this is the problem. they rely too much on talksport. why would i listen to talksport (even as a hardcore EPL fan?) probably 20% of the content has no relevence to me (traffic reports, adverts, etc)
i can’t call in and have my say so i’m left talking to the radio.
I tuned in this afternoon for about half an hour and what I heard sounded ‘somewhat’ professional. I presume it was Cam Luke and Richie Callandar… Cam was good… he has very much a Radio Sport style… fast paced talking and plenty of opinion and enthusiasm though he certainly is ‘geeky’ at times… Richie was sounding quite professional as well… more of the Big Marn type style… they spent about five minutes talking about the second test (must have watched it at home or at the pub cos Foxtel have apparently cancelled the EON subscription due to non-payment… haha)… the talk about the cricket was fairly insightful (and inciteful)… almost Radio Sport standard… but then they spent 25 minutes talking about dating and girls and tinder and read about 4 or 5 emails from blokes seeking dating advice.
