Possibly to get extra multi channels and HD when that was less common.
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Even further north in the Wide Bat area, people had large arrays trying to receive Brisbane and Darling Downs. That was mainly before the local stations got underway. When 6 and 8 went on air it became difficult to receive 7 and 9. Gympie was lucky to have 1 and 4 as the local stations.
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Did the Sunshine Coast ever have a local ABC TV station on VHF?
Or just the commercial SEQ-10 (I think) which I assume was from Dulong?
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Correct - no local ABC for Nambour.
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Iâm sure they had 5A from Nambour. I recall watching it in the early 80âs from Currimundi.
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Youâre right - I completely forgot about 5a.
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I thought for a minute Iâd lost the plot. Iâd also found it in the ABT annual report of 1976/77 recently as I was only going back of my memory and I would have only been all of 6 years old when I saw it on the channel dial whilst visiting relatives.
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I remember seeing tall masts like that in the Gold Coast to receive Brisbane 2, 7, 9 10 and Northern NSW channel 8.
More recently in 2013 I stayed in an apartment in Noosa that was up on some hills away from the beach and could receive both Brisbane & Sunshine Coast digital channels very well. Not sure what their antenna setup was like.
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RTN 8 was like a de facto local station for the Gold Coast. That plus ABRN 6 were pretty easy to receive especially on the southern end of the coast. The Brisbane stations could be received with perfect quality with a high antenna. Especially along the coast of NNSW there were lost of antennas pointed to Brisbane even down to Byron. The further south it became harder to get 7 and 9 adjacent to 6 and 8 with the tuners of the time. Oâs signal travelled further and wasnât impacted by adjacent interference but was impacted by co-channelling from SpE in summer. 6 and 8 could sometime be impacted from Wide Bay with troppo (and vice versa) which was why Wide Bay was vertically polarised to reduce the impact.
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Most parts of Gold Coast didnât really need a tall mast. Just a couple of metres above the roofline was enough in the central areas like Broadbeach Waters to get everything.
But if you wanted say Brisbane down from Tweed Heads you needed a taller mast, but like you said, Mt Nardi was more of an issue.
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I remember seeing a few antennas for receiving TVQ-0 from Ballina up until the late-1980s. That was about the Southern extent of Brisvegas TV reception.
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Took the TinySA Ultra up to Pt Lookout today to see what TV can be picked up. Manning River Band 3 was noted, as well as Richmond/Tweed. SBS Armidale on Ch 34 also noted with Mt Moombil dominant. Weak signals on Chs 46-50 were noted. Assumed to be the Toormina transmitter.
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Good catches!
Interesting you were getting Northern Rivers, thought Mt Dowe may have been present enough to interfere or block it?
Anything on Block D (40-45)? Tamworth probably only real candidate there.
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I could tell it was Richmond/Tweed as Ch 28 is used on Mt Dowe and there was nothing there. Ch 28 is not used at Mt Nardi.
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I remember visiting Ballarat before aggregation & would often see very tall antennas mounted on residentâs roof it was simply there way of trying to get more choice on what they could watch.
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Most houses in Ballarat had antennas for Melbourne Commercial TV and/or BCV-8 Bendigo. Many of the antennas are still in-situ.
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Conversley, I donât recall seeing many large antennas in other major VIC centres like Bendigo or Shepparton⌠they are probably just a bit too far from Melbourne given the Mt Dandenong site is in eastern Melbourne as well as the spacing issue. The only ones I really saw were just to get GMV-6/BCV-8.
Traralgon did have a few being on the ârightâ side of Melbourne and with GLV being on VHF 10 originally, it did make it easier to get 7 and 9.
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You can still see some houses in Shepparton with tall horizontal Band II VHF aerials which used to receive AMV-4 Albury in the days before aggregation. Also some UHF horizontal antennas pointed south-west to Mt Alexander to receive SBS from 1992 until Shepp got its own SBS service in 2000 (my parents had such a setup at their old house in Shepp).
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The ârightâ side of Melbourne for TV but not the ârightâ side for FM!
I believe Mt Dandenong TV is omnidirectional whereas FM has a null to the east therefore FM gets out far better on the âwrongâ side out west towards Geelong, Great Ocean Road, Ballarat, etc.
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Back in the day you could get GTV9 as far as Lakes Entrance, although it was snowy and only watchable overnight when TNT9 Launceston wasnât interfering with it.
Not all FM is the same. ABC & SBS stations on FM are non-directional and higher power than commercial and community stations.
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