Looks like they haven’t updated the channel name, but the network name is correct however.
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think it’s because it’s an older Panasonic TV
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Little bit of activity this morning in Renmark despite it being a relatively cool morning and hardly anything on the Hepburn charts
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Some vintage long distance television from 1960, with reports that a family in Gladstone, Queensland, are regular viewers of ABV2 from Melbourne
Source: TV Times
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Brisbane is a bit more than 200 miles from Gladstone! More like 300. Unusual for Easter SpE to be so good?
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273 miles according to Google Maps.
Agree that it is unusual, also for it to occur that often.
I am tempted to call BS on all of their claims.
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I assume that they had a very tall, high gain antenna installed in an attempt to receive TV reception from Brisbane after 1958. So that the antenna would be aimed to the south. Installations as far north as Childers could get Brisbane (and Toowoomba) quite well before local TV transmission started on 6 and 8. In Gladstone though that would bring in regular SpE in summer months and potential tropo from Brisbane but unusual to just receive one station from one location for long periods especially in April.
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They probably live on a hill in one of the best spots of Gladstone for that to occur as well.
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Or perhaps not since it didn’t seem to be effective for Brisbane.
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I am not very fluent in long distance TV matters so am happy to be educated on this, but I was just wondering, would the fact that there were so few TV signals bouncing around in 1960 that it made it easier for long distance signals to reach further or with better clarity than would have been possible later when the VHF band was a lot more cluttered?
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It would definitely have been easier to receive a signal from one station with no co-channel interference. There would only have been four capital city channel 2 stations to the south of Gladstone in Easter 1960 I think.
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OK, so did anyone ever sneakily get on the roof of their parents house as a youngster when they were not at home to fiddle about with the TV antenna to do any DXing or experiments?
I did, as I grew up in Hamilton NSW, an inner suburb of Newcastle, and our TV was set up for the main Mt Sugarloaf TX. We had seperate VHF Band I and UHF antennas, so around 1993-94, I pointed the UHF one at the Merewether site, and I plugged the VHF one into my FM tuner to give me better FM reception (from Sydney, as I rotated that to point south).
Sydney FM improved from very weak mono and to clear mono, and Central Coast FM improved from clear mono to fairly clean stereo. The only downside of the TV change is that SBS became slightly snowy, but my parents never really noticed 
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I tried on more than one occasion to rotate the VHF/UHF combo aerial aiming towards Melbourne to aim to Ballarat but never had any luck with reception - the Ballarat signal was just too poor on a simple setup like ours.
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I guess with the Ballarat TX being on the wrong side of town for you (out closer to Beaufort really), you probably weren’t to know that at the time…
Bendigo would have been difficult too with the wrong polarity, even though it’s TX is a lot closer to Melbourne than Ballarat’s is.
Gippsland would have been easiest of the three with the same polarity and in roughly the same direction as Mt Dandenong (assuming you weren’t down past Dandenong). Though being sandwiched between 7 and 9 (after 1980) wouldn’t have helped.
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I didn’t move the main antenna that was an all band affair. I did manage to get my parents to let me install a dedicated Band III antenna for my bedroom TV. That gave the opportunity to get semi permanent reception for Channels 6 an 8 from Lismore, 10 Darling Downs and 10 from Nambour. There was also some chance of troppo from the north in Band III - Wide Bay and Mackay . Also SpE from the main antenna that would occasionally bring in various stations on Ch 1 incl NZ plus on Band II stations like ABNT 3 and GTS 4.
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Yeah, I had always just presumed the Ballarat TX would be closer to town, like on Mt Buninyong or Mt Warrenheip, never realised until later how far it was. Bendigo was almost unheard of due to the range in the way and as you say the wrong polarity.
Gippsland was definitely one of the more reliable ones, especially down in Geelong as most people’s antennas pointed generally ENE already. I remember watching a snowy GLV8 a couple of times down there. Even today it’s still not uncommon to get the Gippsland DTV channels in Geelong on good tropo days without a lot of effort (or a dedicated antenna).
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Yes I had the same experiences/thoughts, it wasn’t until the internet came around and I found out how far away some of the transmitters were from their major service centres.
Tamworth and Dubbo were the big surprises for me… Mt Dowe for NEN9 is 113 km as the crow flies to Tamworth and Mt Cenn Cruaich for CWN6 being 107 km from Dubbo!
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Same here - I didn’t realise that the main Darling Downs transmitter weren’t at Toowoomba.
When I first tried for distant TV I didn’t realise that reception would be so variable or that troppo existed let alone SpE. Probably my earliest memories of FM DX reception were listening to Adelaide’s channel 7 news on the audio carrier of GTS 4 on the FM band.
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It’s location actually makes sense considering that it had to cover the whole western/south western side of the state, especially for places like Ararat, Horsham and Hamilton. Warrnambool, Portland and Nhill would have to wait until the end of the decade to get their translators. I remember reading that Warrnambool and Portland were fed directly off Lookout Hill. Nhill was fed via a UHF translator on Mount Arapiles. Once the transmitter on Mount Dundas came online back in the early 80’s, all 3 could be directly fed from here instead.
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Couple of things in your post, wouldn’t you have had a VHF Band II antenna for channel 3-5/5A not VHF Band I?
Why would’ve SBS become a bit snowy when you turned the UHF antenna to the Merewether site, I would’ve thought reception would’ve been much the same from Hamilton & what about the other channels on UHF, (NRTV & Prime, & ABC on UHF)?
In early life I didn’t need to get on the roof, we didn’t have a roof mounted TV antenna until much later (maybe early '93) when I put one up to get the UHF Central Coast channels from Forresters Beach/ Bouddi, yes I could receive both sites at my location on top of the hill at Eleebana in Lake Macquarie.
When I was a youngster, we only had the rabbits ears on top of the TV & I’d have to move those if I was watching the Newcastle channels or the VHF Sydney channels from Artarmon/Willoughby, is that long distance TV by this tread though, Sydney channels were permanent for me with just Rabbit Ears antenna?
Mum did complain though after a while when I put the Central Coast UHF antenna up, as she wanted to watch Newcastle ads & News on NBN not Central Coast ones.
In early 2002 I pulled that antenna down & put up a VHF Band 3 antenna for the Sydney channels & a UHF Band 4/5 antenna for the Newcastle ones, mum was happy again & we could also start watching DTV from Sydney as I’d also started selling DTV STB’s (even sold one to ABC Master Control in Sydney so they could monitor there DTV services), as I was now setup to watch DTV & knew when it was coming to Newcastle (I spent time up Mt Sugarloaf watching them ready the sites for DTV to start), I got to watch the very first test transmission of DTV from Mt Sugarloaf Newcastle, memories going back was it at 11am one morning in April?
Side track there for a minute, but growing up I never had any issues watching long distance TV, it was normal for me to watch Sydney channels at home in Newcastle & WIN channel 4 Illawarra over the summer periods during ducting.
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