The Living Room is renovating a house in Newcastle. Would this be designed to pick up Sydney VHF? The lowest antenna has some of its longer elements swaying in the breeze.
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Ohhhh Antenna Porn LOL
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Does look like a legacy Sydney VHF setup.
The orientation of all of those antennas suggest to me that the house is roughly in the Maitland area
Maitland would not be able to get Sydney digital VHF consistently enough for such a setup to be of much use anymore, notwithstanding the fact that programming isn’t much different to the local stations.
EDIT: I’m tempted to reply to @oz1235’ s post, but such content may not be suitable for younger Media Spy viewers.
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Couple old legacy antennas at a property I was staying at around the Corny Point area.
Old analogue antenna that surprisingly worked ok for picking up Adelaide from a distance of around 130km away, no SBS but most of the other stations worked ok without a booster, 44 Adelaide was hit and miss, other stations cut in and out every now and again.
This old bigray antenna didn’t work as good as the smaller antenna on the shed, 44 Adelaide worked ok for a few brief moments but then faded out, no 7 or 9 but managed to lock onto the TEN, ABC and SBS stations
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Thanks for the pics and observations!
Surprising that the little antenna worked better for Adelaide that the big one, as the larger antenna is definitely suitable for long distance VHF reception, they were very common in regional areas back in the 1960s to 1980s.
I suspect loose wiring or something on the bigger one.
This post has made me wonder what other pairings of VHF Band III channels couldn’t have been used in the same area for analog TV
VHF 6 & 7
VHF 7 & 8
VHF 8 & 9
VHF 6 & 9 ??
VHF 6 & 10 (as above)
VHF 7 & 11 ??
Are the reasons that some are too close together (though noting 9 and 10 can be used together) or oscillator IF or something else?
Adjacent channels can’t be used for analogue however there is channel 9A between the analogue channels 9 and 10 so that was OK.
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That small antenna looks a bit like its for FM.
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Thanks!
Suspected that was the case re adjacent channels and forgot about 9A!
Though I don’t recall seeing 6 & 9 or 7 & 11 used together before?
Wondered if there was a reason for that.
Can’t think of any reason to not use those combos though it would have been rare.
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Update:
Condingup/Howick
ABEW6
WAW9
WOW11
SBS58
Port Headland
ABPHW7
WOW9A
WAW11
SBS42
Channel 11 was pretty rare in any combo.
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Not used on early bandplans, perhaps?
Going through the EPG on my relative’s TV at Maitland S.A and they’ve had stations come in with prefixes from Ballarat, Western Victoria and Mount Gambier
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I’ve noticed my Panasonic TV must do a rescan automatically over night as it seems to always have distant channels automatically added to the channel list. By the time I’ve noticed they’ve been added the tropo has usually past and I’ve missed them and they appear as “no signal”. Caught them a couple of times working, usually heavily pixellated.
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My Sony TV adds stations automatically if they come into range, have caught 7 Adelaide working (I’m just out of Renmark) but was pixelated
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My Panasonic DVR constantly gives me a message something like “New DTV channels available”, but I am thinking this is moreso because I can get a couple of different signals with the same LCN number and name
eg. NBN 28 from Warners Bay / Belmont North as well as NBN 36 Newcastle (high power site)
But both are on LCN 8 with the same channel name of “Nine Newcastle” but I can only scan one of them in.
Nothing much in terms of tropo lately here in Renmark, the odd “no service” on a couple stations but not strong enough for a picture. We have good/strong ducting forecast one day, pretty much all gone the next
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There were analogue TV masts in Bairnsdale and Lakes Entrance for Melb TV. I recall being surprised first seeing this in 1996/7. I remember that it’s over 200km.
Correct and what @Shaun1997 needs is a high gain band III antenna only with very high front/back ratio to null the Mildura signal. And keep saving @Shaun1997, you’ll need a masthead amp and one of those three legged towers that are prolific in the Riverland.
I wonder what a modern day cost is for the three legged towers?
It’s 300 ohm ribbon, look between the elements. No good for DTV. @Shaun1997 @Radiohead
For VHF. Three channel spacing for UHF e.g 28, 31, 34.
Agree @TV.Cynic. It’s most like for 88 - 108 MHz @Shaun1997
Consider which direction the antenna is facing at Maitland, SA and you can see why these channel sets would drift in.
I’ve always thought that it’s entirely possible for VHF 9A DAB+ services from Melb to at least reduce fringe coverage of Adelaide DAB+ or swamp it entirely in some locations at times.
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Got a new TV for my loungeroom, 49inch Panasonic. Have to wait for the warmer months to see how it goes with tropo here in Renmark, we’d have some good tropo on the charts but by morning it’s almost all gone. I hooked the old TV up with a booster in my spare room, brings the signal strength from Adelaide and Mildura stations up to around 4-5 (quality stays at 0), might bring up a picture of some kind if there’s ever enough tropo for TV
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Quality is probably more important than signal strength for good digital TV reception.
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