It’s gone now. It’s actually the first time probably since before the July 2021 changeover that the Mildura TV stations have actually tried coming in
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Following on from the great conversation in the Regional TV History Pre-Aggregstion thread, I have some UHF analogue DXing from the mid 90s to share
In Newcastle
WIN-59 Wollongong
CTC-62 Wollongong
CBN-65 Wollongong
NBN-62 Taree
NRN-65 Taree
NRN-59 Muswellbrook
NEN-62 Muswellbrook
Wollongong and Taree would often CCI over each other, resulting in white vertical lines, rendering it unwatchable.
Muswellbrook was never very strong, only received on a UHF antenna pointed at Sugarloaf which is roughly the same direction.
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I can remember picking up NBN62 off the back of the UHF antenna causing significant CCI to CTC62 in Windsor.
One Sunday morning in late 2007, FM from Mt Dowe was booming into Windsor. Faint CCI from NEN9 was noted underneath TCN9.
I also do remember the ABC DTV service from Middle Brother ABTN7 causing DTV hash over ATN7 one evening.
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bit of Mildura mischief in Renmark this morning, don’t think I’ve locked onto anything from Mildura since the channel switch-arounds.
Loungeroom TV was a nice and crisp picture without any pixelation despite the weak signal
SBS Mildura is a newbie on the spare room TV
quite a lot of pixelation but enough to decode
the ‘GEM HD Mildura’ should say ‘10HD Mildura’
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My analogue dxing was when i used to live at Oatley with my parents. To this day they have the same setup. A Hills combination VHF / UHF analogue era antenna, and a Fracarro 20 element 39-69 UHF antenna, with a 44dBuV band 5 masthead amp.
Then we used to receive all the Knights Hill analogue UHF channels, Win 59 was quite snowy., but it was on the lowest tower back then.
My parents got Wollongong to watch the cricket uninterrupted, and to try and fix the ghosting problems on ABC 2.
Oatley suffered quite severe ghosting on ABC 2 and basically there was not a lot the installers could do to fix the problem other then get Wollongong. The installers even claimed that Kings Cross which came from the Hyatt Kingsgate back then received a slight ghost on ABC 2 from Gore Hill and rebroadcasted it on UHF 46.
Did anyone here remember having ghosting issues with ABC2 in the Sydney region???
Dxing In normal conditions we would receive the Brokers Nose UHF channels very weakly. Kings Cross / North Head off the back of the antenna. With tropo from the north Foresters Beach would CCI with SBS 39 and ABC 42 from North Head.
We only very occasionally would have CCI from Middle Brother on Prime and Capital Illawarra.
Newcastle UHF channels were also received off the back of the antenna with tropo. Hence why Illawarra digital tv suffered from CCI from Newcastle.
Today they watch their free to air tv on foxtel as the Sydney digital channels are received a lot weaker as the old analogue antenna is no longer suitable, and is the Wollongong antenna and masthead amp which are now out of band.
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That wouldn’t surprise me, as the wideband antennas to get 0, 2, 7, 9 and 10 would have been optimised for 7-10, given they were the more popular channels.
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Yes, in the lower elevated parts of the Hawkesbury, ABN2 suffered from bad ghosting and static interference, exacerbated by aircraft from the Richmond RAAF Base, especially at night when they used to do the touch and go landing exercises. Band 3 channels were not as badly affected. UHF transmissions from Knights Hill were far superior in places like Richmond and Windsor.
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Oatley was very similar as some parts went down to sea level but the higher parts were still obstructed by the Hurstville ridge line.
As the high rise buildings went up the ghosting on ABC2 got worse. The commercial channel 7.9,10 were fine with minimal to no ghosting, but the ABC had a double image to the right of the screen.
SBS 28 was also difficult to receive and suffered from low signal and some moderate ghosting.
Wollongong was nowhere as good as what was received in Richmond / Windsor. Really they could have put a UHF translator on top of one of the buildings at Hurstville to fix the reception issues along the George’s River as it was outside the coverage area of Kings Cross / North Head, and Wollongong was marginal at best.
However when digital tv started it solved all of these problems around Oatley. Now just need a high gain antenna and in some case a masthead amp. In the analogue days there were lots of UHF antennas pointing towards Wollongong now there are very few.
Now the only multi path interference experienced in Oatley is on fm.
Where I now live in Stanhope Gardens you can receive Sydney, Sydney NW, Sydney SW, and the Illawarra digital tv.
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Was a bit of a battle between Adelaide, Mildura and possibly Western Victoria/Mount Dundas this morning
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Having a dedicated VHF antenna that you could easily rotate would have been interesting as to whether you could get 2 or even all 3 locations cleanly.
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The TV in the hotel I’m staying at in Mount Gambier has Ballarat and local channels. Was nice to watch programming 30 minutes in advance!
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Most hotels in town do that as do many residents. When SES8 wasn’t enough, lol
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Installed a new UHF tv antenna today at my location in Stanhope Gardens as my old uhf antenna fell apart about 6 months ago. It was a Digitek brand which I used for Wollongong tv.
Replaced it with a Hills TSPF2839 which is cut for the Wollongong frequencies, noticed a massive difference in the strength and quality of the Wollongong channels. With the antenna only going up to 39 I am receiving Sydney SW UHF channel, and even had some brief reception of the Illawarra channels from the Gib at Bowral. I have never received these before even with tropo with the old antenna.
Looking forward to some decent tropo from the highlands to receive these channels again stronger.
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Shows the impact of a quality product rather than going down the cheap road.
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Absolutely but Digitek make a good high gain VHF band 3 10 element which has not missed a beat. BTW picked the Hills UHF antenna up on sale from schnap Electronics at Kingsgrove $80 including delivery, cheaper then buying directly from Bitek who took over Hills antenna.
I did look at the Matchmaster antennas but they were quite pricey, and were wide band 28-51. I only need 28-39, and if the next restacks goes ahead UHF will be 28-39 only.
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You probably would have had better Gib and Razorback reception with a wideband antenna. At the expense of Knights Hill though.
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I would get better current reception of Razorback and the Gib with a wide band but if the next restack happens all UHF will fall in 28-39 so should be future proof. Razorback is just slightly off bearing from Knights Hill.
It would be great having one antenna that gives me Sydney and Knights Hill but Artarmon / Gore Hill will always be stronger and have a better quality signal. But if I can achieve both from the one antenna I can then take down the 10 element VHF, and just have the fm, and a vertical dab+ Dipole to cover all my reception.
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What would be really good would be the Gib being a higher power site, and being setup similar to the Central Coast translators. Sydney on a northern beam at high power say 15KW to cover SW Sydney, and the regionals on a lower power towards Sydney, but still enough power to have similar overspill into western Sydney as Knights Hill does.
One antenna pointed in the same direction for both Sydney and Wollongong reception.
Won’t happen as the Gib is in the regional NSW tv licence area and we can’t have Sydney tv broadcasting out of there.
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And also because Razorback is much closer and seems to do that job perfectly well.
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