Impressive given that WIN-3 was only low powered for North Wollongong.
I remember getting it on the car radio down near Little Bay, just past Sydney airport.
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I think it would be highly unlikely you would receive Newcastle at your location even with a dedicated UHF antenna, unless under the strongest northerly coastal Tropo.
Before my parents at Oatley got a dedicated UHF antenna for Wollongong tv reception for the cricket they were able to receive the old Wollongong UHF analogue signals off the back of their Hills PF17 antenna. It was very weak black and white snowy / ghosty, it had no audio, but the signals were still there. They had a distribution amp to boost the Sydney VHF / UHF signals to 4 outlets which allowed them to receive the very weak Wollongong UHF analogue signals then. So I would think there would still be enough Wollongong signal coming in off the back of your antenna to cancel out Newcastle under normal conditions.
VHF 3
At Oatley VHF 3 or should I say 91.75 / 92.0 was always NBN3. We could received the audio on our Hifi on 91.75 in all conditions but only 92.0 under Tropo conditions. Under the strongest tropo we would get a clear black and white picture for NBN3 but never a colour picture or any audio through the TV. The local 2NBC fm wiped out any chance of receiving NBN3, and you could hear the audio for 2NBC over the top of NBN3 on the TV.
I could receive WIN 3 audio on 91.75 on the car radio as far north as Garie Beach / Helensburgh, by Waterfall it was NBN 3.
I once had the audio for ABC 3 Canberra on 91.75 and a weak black and white snowy picture on my tv at Oatley with rabbits ears during an extreme inland Tropo event.
ECN8 was also an occasional catch with extreme northerly coastal Tropo back at the time too.
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I remember getting the NBN3 video and audio carriers booming into Wollongong Harbour in November 2012. This was a few days before the analogue switch off in Northern NSW.
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And the authorities assign Wollongong and Newcastle digital tv on the same frequencies.
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ACMA knew very well about the DTV co-channel likely issues & the full history of tropo TV going between Newcastle & Illawarra but they didnât have much say in the channel allocations only deal with the potential problems.
DTV channel allocations were decided on by Free TV Australia in collaboration with all the broadcasters, the Metro commercial networks had the most say & held all the power in the decision, despite the regional stations in both markets complaining & not wanting to be co-channeled, the metro networks over ruled them & chose what channels they wanted to use as translators in metro areas & the regional stations were thrown the leftovers, which meant the only available channels not already used by the still operating Analogue TV & DTV in Sydney/Central Coast were the same block in both areas.
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I wonder why they didnât ease the pain by aligning the channels - putting ABC/SBS on the same frequency in both markets, and then ideally NBN/WIN in the opposite marketâs UA channel, as they were then and still are the only ones with separate ownership, youâd have more options for interference management if itâs your own signal on the other side.
Is there less of an issue with Seven when thereâs these tropo events?
Short answer, cost.
The 3 commercial stations in the Illawarra shared the same site (WIN), so for engineering ease & cost it was better to bundle them together & with the ABC & SBS at the other site (BA). At Knights Hill new towers & antenna arrays were built at each site for the new DTV services.
In Newcastle they couldnât replace the UHF antenna at the BA site due to still needing it in Band 5 for the analogue channels of ABC, SBS & Prime.
NBN were going to build a new tower for DTV but it worked out too expensive & they had trouble getting DA plans for it through council, so NRTV moved analogue to the BA site from the NBN site on channel 57, then NBN replaced the UHF antenna with a Band 4 plus array to suit them on channel 36, so ABC & SBS joined them there on Channels, 37 & 38, with Prime & NRTV using the Band 5 UHF antenna at the BA site for their DTV on channels 53 & 56.
It wasnât until after analogue switched off & the restack happened that they replaced the UHF antenna at the BA site with a Band 4/5 one & Prime & SCA 10 (I think it was at that time?) moved channels down to Block C & the ABC & SBS moved back to the BA site giving them an alternate site over at NBN, but that also left NBN being the lone DTV transmission from their site with the other 4 at the BA site.
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Both Newcastle and Wollongong ABCs were on 5A. The old ABCB annual reports said that both would be synchronous transmission when ABHN5 moved to 5A in 1977.
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I do remember when both were on air, living in the mush zone Oatley, we would get horizontal lines when there was CCI during ducting.
I think ABC 5A Wollonong converted to UHF before ABC 5A Newcastle. I remember 5A Newcastle after the Wollonong switch off got into Sydney much better than NBN3. We could get a snowy black and white to colour picture in normal conditions with our standard tv antenna pointing north. Even with rabbits ears on the bedroom tv could get some level of reception.
With Tropo 5A Newcastle would boom in very strong close to local strength.
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Lithgow used to be an interesting location for receiving both NBN3 and WIN4 in parts of that town. Generally more reliable than Sydney TV. The Lithgow Mercury used to list them in their TV guide before aggregation, alongside local ABC and Prime TV channels.
For a bit of fun, in elevated locations I remember receiving 91.75 MHz audio carrier from NBN3 on the car radio before 2013 whenever I regularly visited relatives there.
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Yes, I remember stopping for lunch at the pub at Hampton and being very surprised they were getting WIN4 from Wollongong.
I wonder how reception of CBN4 at Portland/Wallerawang would have been affected with WIN4 booming in nearby?
WIN-4 reception very much depended on your location. If a hill or ridge was in the way of Portland and you werenât too close to the Lithgow ABCN-5 translator, you had a chance. (This was all before January 1990 FWIW)
I couldnât find anything to confirm this, but I have a hunch that CBN-4 Portland was vertical, not horizontal, which would help to reduce this issue.
From the sources I have with me, CBN-4 Portland was transmitting in horizontal polarisation.
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I just got one of these UHF antennas for DXing:
Doing some preliminary tests before I get it mounted on the roof here in southern Sydney.
Knights Hill (Wollongong): Literally works hand holding it indoors in the middle of my room. No amp connected.
Kings Cross: Worked hand holding outdoors, but not as strong as Knights Hill.
Mount Sugarloaf (Newcastle): Nothing. Would be curious to see with an amp + mounted on the roof if thereâs any chance to catch it, but probably not, given Wollongong on the same frequencies.
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You might get Newcastle, but probably not with Knights Hill being so strong you can get it indoors.
Donât fall into the trap a lot do, putting an amp in a Digital TV system, itâs not like the old analogue days where an amp could much improve a crap signal, amps in Digital should only be used to overcome distribution losses in the system, if you donât have a good signal at the antenna, youâre only going to be amplifying crap, just making any reception even worse, because all the noise will now be amplified too.
Also be careful putting an amp in an already good signal system as too strong a digital signal will create the same sort of reception issues as too low a signal will, due to overload in the receiver & also amplifying any noise.
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Noice!
What about the NW and SW Sydney sites, can you get those? Or Southern Highlands?
I suppose no chance of Central Coast regionals.
Thanks for the tips, RFBurns. I have a masthead amp on my household system as I split it over 8 outlets.
My balcony has limited visibility and only in certain directions, so Iâd need to get it up on the roof to really test it out, but here are some spectrum scans from hand-holding the antenna on my balcony.
Pointing towards Knights Hill â strong signals:
Pointing towards Sydney NW â weaker, but still visible in the spectrum:
Pointing towards Newcastle â looks like the signals are there, but really weak; Kings Cross signals visible also:
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Or perhaps those are the Knights Hill signals off the back of the antenna.
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