I knocked out the boot button on mine so can’t update it until I fix it
You might be able to use a combiner to feed two antennas into one TEF?
Has anyone tried that?
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As in a fixed one so that both antennas are feeding in all the time? Or a switchable one?
I had got the extra antennas for more directionality so a fixed one would kind of defeat the point of that – although maybe it’d boost the overall signal strength?
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I’m using such a setup currently on my TEF, but only for separating AM and FM. Two FMs might cause an issue on the same input.
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Combining two antennas doesn’t necessarily improve the signal strength unless the cable runs are carefully adjusted to be identical otherwise the waves cancel out and the signals are reduced.
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The Sydney TEF webservers will be offline from tomorrow morning in order to install and switch to the new aerial setup. Upon return, the servers will be:
- TVCL 1 (North) [Switchable antennas facing NW/NE]
- TVCL 2 (East)
- TVCL 3 (South)
- TVCL 4 (West)
- TVCL 5 (Local omnidirectional)
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You’re genuinely doing God’s work sharing that with the world. Thank you
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The following servers are up:
- TVCL North (dual antenna NW/NE)
- TVCL South
- TVCL West
I am waiting for some SMA to F-type connectors to be able to also bring up:
- TVCL East
- TVCL Omni
Antenna setup:
When I tested it, TVCL East didn’t bring in any stations better than the single yagi I had before, so I’m considering whether I should reorient it, given Es from New Zealand isn’t a common event. I’m considering whether there’d be more value in splitting out the western or southern directions instead. Each colour below represents each antenna’s targets under the current setup:
I’ve also been testing out FM-DX Monitoring, which logs all received RDS signals as well as providing a spectrum graph (see screenshot below).
It works reasonably well – but caveat being that it needs to spend several sounds on every frequency to update the RDS information. This is not ideal as I usually have the radios just scanning the blank frequencies looking for DX and only stopping if there’s RDS. However, running the monitoring requires stopping for 5+ seconds on each frequency. As such, to avoid missing out on DX logs, I will only run it on the TVCL Omni server when I bring it online. I might set up a sixth dedicated TEF just to scan RDS – we’ll see.
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The USB sound card I bought to connect the extra TEFs to has arrived - unfortunately, the audio input is only mono. Does anyone know of any USB stereo audio input options? Preferably, not too expensive.
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Try this one, it’s from Amazon and it’s very cheap: https://www.amazon.com.au/Adapter-Windows-Laptops-Desktops-Headphones/dp/B0C493TN9Z?ref_=Oct_d_obs_d_4913360051_1&pd_rd_w=L67T0&content-id=amzn1.sym.c4afde56-111e-4509-b2f8-074457d4db5a&pf_rd_p=c4afde56-111e-4509-b2f8-074457d4db5a&pf_rd_r=VVW8A0G37KM41MBYQDEM&pd_rd_wg=sQgx8&pd_rd_r=a55e2341-ff10-49ed-8877-b225697dbc81&pd_rd_i=B0C493TN9Z
Thats the issue with a lot of those USB DACs, they aren’t honest on what they actually can do on the input. If you’re running this on a Windows box maybe try one of those Creative SB Play 3s? They seem to have the jack, can’t find any info as to whether or not they’re actually stereo or not either.
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The USB DAC I use for my webserver has a pretty good sounding stereo input.
It’s the Creative Soundblaster sb1560. I’m not sure if you can still buy it though since I got it awhile ago.
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I can confirm they are in mono too. Don’t bother purchasing one of these.
Unless someone can find something like what @AustraliaRadio232 has (and one that’s cheap enough but still good quality), then I reckon (for now) the TVCL East/Omni servers should be started up on fmdx.org in Mono for the time being.
Very much a discontinued product. You can essentially find something similar like this one on AliExpress, though be prepared to pay $200.
Perhaps time to launch the TVCL East/Omni webservers in Mono as a testing hub (a beta of such, on fmdx.org) for the time being? (Paging @tvcl)
I had that happen, but in my case I believe it was my own fault, of using a cleaner on the screen, and some of the liquid must have seeped into the circuit via the little holes below the 6687 chip (that allow excess solder to flow through). Even if that’s not the cause here, it’s still a lesson to not let any liquid get under the screen.
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Thanks for that. I don’t see it available now, unfortunately.
Yes, I will put them online once I get the SMA to F-type connectors I need to be able to connect the aerials. I’m waiting for them to arrive in the mail.
The second USB audio adapter I got is at least 44.1 kHz mono; the first one I got only does 24 kHz mono, so one of them is going to sound really bad. Considering just ordering another headless TEF as an alternative since it has the audio feed built in.
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Yep, you should. It’ll save me (and a few other MS members here) from searching all over the internet trying to find a USB DAC that actually promises Stereo input.
Wishing you the best of luck with the purchase and installation of your new Headless TEF (if you decide to buy one, that is).
After looking at some aerial imagery, it looks like the antennas aren’t quite facing the directions I had wanted.
(The yagis just look like a jumbled mess from above
- but still possible to figure out the direction by looking for the right elements to measure)
The dark colours show where the antennas are actually pointing and the light colours where I was intending for them to point:
This might partially explain why the results weren’t a more significant improvement to before.
As it’s difficult to realign all the antennas on the mast, I’ve suggested a shortcut method to the installer to just turn the mast itself by -20 degrees, which will shift all the antennas to look more like this:
Then the northwest (green) antenna which is low on the mast can be individually adjusted +14 degrees to point where it was originally supposed to point:
This shows the current orientation of the antennas versus the transmitters I’m aiming to get with each antenna:
- Northwest antenna: Too far east - was hoping to point it in the middle of the main FNQ targets of Cairns, Townsville, Mackay and Rockhampton, but right now it’s just pointing right at Rockhampton.
- Northeast antenna: Way too far east - pointing out towards New Caledonia. Hoping maybe there’s a chance for some Newcastle services to actually make it in once it’s pointed back towards Newcastle.
- Southeast antenna: Was hoping to point it to the middle of New Zealand to get DX from both islands, but pointing too far south at the moment - pointing a bit south of Dunedin.
- Southwest antenna: Too far west. Hoping bringing it back east will improve Wollongong/Nowra services, but explains why tropo from Riverina/Wagga was coming in so often on this antenna, since that’s where it’s pointing.
- West antenna: Pointing more so northwest at the moment than west. Hoping to catch Es from around SA once it’s brought further south and maybe better reception from Orange.
After adjustment, it should hopefully look more like this:
Maybe it’ll give a better chance of UHF TV reception from Newcastle also (though I’m not holding my breath).
Still waiting on the SMA to F type connectors to be able to connect up the omni and east antennas, unfortunately.
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