I am sure many Bunbarians would miss tuning into Rage on 107.75…stupidly I didn’t take advantage of this whilst I was over in 2005. I remember hearing ‘Madeline’ on ABC Kids one morning, though.
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Yes, I was guilty of making and distributing ‘Rage tapes’, sourced from 107.75FM.
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Has testing started yet would love someone to post some test transmission audio.
102.5 103.3 and 104.1 are vacant frequencies in Perth at the moment. I see @cmoore used the rare opportunity yesterday to hear Mt Gambier via sporadic E.
We’ll see what we can do with regards to capturing some audio.
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Unfortunately 102.5 fm not coming as new ABC Fm
And so are 91.3, 95.3 and 104.9
They probably won’t be testing until a week before. And will they be testing/launching all three ABC stations on FM or just ABC Perth?
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Really reminds us east coasters of how isolated Perth is from other cities and even large towns.
Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne would kill to have that much free spectrum, especially Brisbane & SEQ - it’s a mess.
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91.3 is occupied by Sports FM Fremantle.
That is what I thought but the ACMA:
FM broadcasting services band in the Perth RA1 licence area
Options paper (April 2021)
had 91.3 MHz listed as NEW (available) as the intention was to push Sports FM to 107.0 MHz (which can be done being an HPON station). That is 91.3 MHz and 104.9 MHz are where 6PR and 6iX would have moved to from AM, so these are now unused. And with 6EBA on 95.3 MHz gone, we have 3 available high-powered FM channels.
And Perth would kill for a 2nd commercial/community DAB+ multiplex given how crowded the current one is (even with 6EBA vacating) where we only get a smattering of the Nova and ARN DAB+ stations.
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SportFM is a community station, not a HPON.
Neither Sport nor Spice FM on 104.9 have moved. The frequencies aren’t “available”.
Yes you are right, but there is little difference betwen HPON and local community radio in terms of Tx power, especially when you can squeeze them within 0.4 MHz of each other (versus the nominal 0.8 MHz spacing). The ACMA planned such that there could be two channels (91.3 and 104.9) for high-powered stations in addition to the pre-existing local and HPON stations. At the moment only 95.3 MHz is obviously vacant. From quick research 91.3 is Sports FM (unchanged), 104.9 is Spice FM (unchanged) and 106.5 is Macedonian Radio (moved from 103.3). From 20km south of Perth I can pick all of these (faintly) except for Spice FM (not today anyway, are they still broadcasting?).
ASIDE: We know 6iX FM is on 105.7 but I can’t pick up anything on this channel. ACMA engineers did a good job ensuring no signal south of Wanneroo or north of Rockingham could reach Perth inner metro. This compared to 89.7 community station from Wanneroo which is quite audible most times (as is 88.5 Swan valley, 107.3 Armadale, 88.9 Kalamunda, 107.9 Fremantle, oh yes and 90.5 China Radio).
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Checked the trusty ACMA list and had confirmed the callsigns for the new Perth services and it sounded weird for me. 102.5 has been confirmed to be 6WF by ABC Perth themselves as well as the ACMA List, but the weird thing is that 103.3 and 104.1 would still be using the AM “6RN” and “6PB” callsigns respectively. I would had expected them to use the “[state number code]ABCRN” and “[state number code]PNN” like the other RN/Newsradio outlets on FM across the country.
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Makes sense - there is no requirement to change callsign upon conversion to FM. Believe 2GN (2GBN) and 2XL (2XXL) are the only stations to do so under this program.
Has been discussed here previously but there are a handful of FM stations with two letter callsigns - beside the recent conversions, 5UV Adelaide and 3CH Kyneton come to mind. 3CH is an oddity as to my knowledge it has never broadcast on AM.
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Also, there are AM stations with 3 letter callsigns. 2WEB is probably the most famous, as well as the RPH stations.
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Yes and 4TAB in Brisbane. Apparently it took some convincing for the ABA to allow them to change to that from 4IP
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ABC Perth first song on FM finalists and vote is now up on Facebook. Survey Monkey link in comments.
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ABC Perth FM will launch on Monday Feb 23. The usual test transmission period is at most 7 days prior to launch. So we should start hearing some test transmission from Monday Feb 16, only 4 days to go. If it is 7 business days, then it could as soon as this weekend!
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At least they haven’t gone for one of the more cliched choices like INXS’s “New Sensation”.
The Pet Shop Boy’s “Go West” would have been a good choice too except not nearly as well known as the others.
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No!!! Someone did SMS this one in though.
I’ve voted for The Masters Apprentices.
In other news, there have been scheduled overnight outages this week on 97.7 and 99.3 Perth. Usually includes SBS 96.9. I haven’t noticed anything on air. More outages scheduled next week.
The techs may well be already testing new equipment. Yes, I’d expect a 1 week test period as well. I’m sure they’ll be ready for the 23rd.
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All three stations should each play a different song by New Kids on the Block.
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