Are they ever going to launch a site or any presence so people know about it?
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I was going through RADCOM and thought itād be interesting to extract the data and map the LPONs and NASs.
Radio Austral on 87.8 seems to have very wide coverage in Sydney given the numbers of transmitters.
Does anyone know what these VHF services below the FM broadcasting band are? (e.g. 70.2, 85.7, 86.5, 87.1)
87.6MHz:
87.8MHz:
88.0MHz:
AM NAS:
VHF NAS:
VHF NAS (CBD inset):
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Got to love that 88 Bondi Radio, which has been off air for yonks.
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Is Raw FM (Dianne Maree Nacson) still on air on the Central Coast and on the Northern Beaches?
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Yes. And supposedly only one TX now.
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Radio Austral on 87.8 MHz has gone from silent carrier to completely off-air. I think my nearest transmitter for the Arabic station on 87.6 MHz (from Lakemba perhaps?) is also off-air.
I now get a mix of different stations at my location in the southern suburbs of Sydney on those frequencies, but a mix of different Arabic transmitters on 87.6 (with a slight offset to one another) plus a country music station and mostly the same country station on 87.8 MHz (River FM?).
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In my area 87.6 and 87.8 are both River fm. With 87.8 being slightly behind 87.6. I cannot receive the Arabic stations on 87.6 as River dominates here on that frequency.
I was up at the Gib in Bowral today dxing Sydney Scientific 8D test transmissions, (Digital Radio Technical Thread) and I had a chance to listen to KIX Country now on 87.6MHZ . The coverage to the north is significantly smaller than 1215. Basically you loose signal just as you start dropping down the hill into the Sydney Basin at Alpine. I could then hear a mix of the Arabic and Rivet fm on 87.6.
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Interesting.
Iām just looking at the SDR spectrum, I can still see an unmodulated carrier on 87.8 but itās not as strong as Radio Australās o/c the other day & this carrier looks noisy & I think not the same centre frequency as Radio Austral was. That said this o/c it isnāt strong enough to block reception of the station Iām hearing - presume Noise FM.
For the past several weeks thereās still a o/c on 88.0 underneath Faith FM.
On 87.6MHz with use of FM CoCh Canceller I receive Noise FM.
BTW is there an ACMA law that a LPON or narrowcaster needs to provide a station ID so many times or hour or periodically? If Noise FM are providing an ID, Iām not listening at the times they provide it. 
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The Broadcasting Services Act never has required this since 1992.
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What format is Noise FM running?
@Ant5476 - any sign of Retro FM 87.8 in the Southern Highlands? I picked it up once from Bungendore but was off air last time I passed through the SH.
(Sorry for playing Socrates; @crankymedia please forgive me).
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Noise fm has been replaced with River Fm here on 87.8.
No Retro fm, just KIX on 87.6 and the God Squad.
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Important role to play to encourage answers for the forum, everyoneās welcome to that role.
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I wonder if Radio Austral have sold there 87.8 licenses.
They have been off air for a few weeks now and just in the last 24 hours a new station with the same power as Austral has started broadcasting.
It seems to be a Chinese language station and has just been playing classic Chinese music, probably on test.
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Itās a wonder thereās never been a Chinese language station on the LPON spectrum in Sydney. Theyāve been limited to NAS services and the odd broadcast on 91.6, mainly around Chinese New Year. There isnāt a Chinese service on the MF āX Bandā, either.
CRI even had LPONs at one point, notably in Canberra with their CRI English service. I think they are still on 90.5 in Perth, or maybe thatās now an independent operation?
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Oh but there was. It was a relatively short lived (on FM) Chinese language music station that was both broadcasting on 87.6 and a frequency in the 77.43MHz band. Probably going back 15 or so years, I canāt recall exactly. Muse Radio
(dead link)
UPDATE: Found it here on Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160302051448/http://www.museradio.com.au/homepage.html#!/page_services
(click on how to listen for frequencies and FM LPON tx locations & NAS frequency.)
Iāve obviously been asleep at the wheel. Thanks for the update & info.
Gosh Radio Austral had been around for ages on 87.8MHz.
Since June 1992 according to their website.
Probably operators had decided to retire or some other reasons, Carmen was the main operations person.
Have heard Cantonese & Mandarin (majority) songs & one other Chinese dialect. Thereās also several Taiwanese artists among the songs. Taiwanese artists like Jay Chou play to packed sell out concerts in Sydney - remember Kato in the movie āThe Green Hornetā?
Will be interesting what station emerges after the test transmission.
2CR & 2AC have been around for a long time on the Sydney VHF NAS band & 91.6 as @dxnerd mentioned.
I donāt think the signal on 87.8 is as strong compared to when Radio Austral was transmitting.
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Yes youāre correct, I remember listening to it on 77.43 from Katoomba back when I lived up there, not a bad station and it operated very professionally, I was sad to see it go.
Also ironic that I forgot about it since I have owned that domain for Muse for about 5+ years now, lol.
I looked around for any stream links that work for them and all of them were dead which also makes me think they have shut up shop.
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87.8 has now got RDS AC878FM so it be safe to assume itās going to be 2AC https://2ac.com.au/
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Nice work. 
Do you think this via the same tx site that Radio Austral occupied at Mt.Pritchard?
I guess when the test transmission ends it will be a rebroadcast of either their Cantonese or Mandarin stream or maybe theyāll do both at different times? 
Re Muse Radio (below)
Seems likely they shut shop sometime around 2018 if the Wayback Machine is any indicator, last active website snap shot was March 2018. IIRC they closed their radio outlets & existed only as a streaming service for some time.
UPDATE (Sept 4th): Inspected the ACMA frequency register. I canāt see any new licences in the Sydney area that would be alternate candidates for 87.8MHz. Think it is likely that 2AC 87.8 is via the old Radio Austral site. I also wanted to highlight that this transmission has a stereo pilot.
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Iām donning my Radio Media Investigative Reporterās Cap 
on this report today. 
Whilst out at the Cabramatta Moon Festival today I dropped into the 2AC pop-up stand and enquired about the 87.8MHz FM test transmission that is carrying Chinese language pop songs.
I got to speak with the station technician who informed me that he knew of the radio station I mentioned but it wasnāt connected with their Radio 2AC transmissions or station which is only carried on the VHF 152MHz narrowband channel.
He did tell me that Radio 2AC were offered the lease of the former Radio Austral licence, but they werenāt interested in the limited coverage of the 87.8 LPON licence.
Interestingly he said that 2AC was fielding a lot of enquires as to what had happened to Radio Austral from their Spanish speaking listeners. I can only gather that the Radio Austral listeners connected Radio Australās 87.8 frequency to Radio 2AC via the current RDS PS, but like us discovered in error that the current transmission on 87.8 is not connected with 2AC Australia Chinese Radio.
The 2AC technician mentioned to me that Radio Austral had been off 87.8 for around two months, which follows on from what @TheChase was mentioning.
The technician seamed to know who was behind the station & commented that the one individual might take a while to get programming in place. He couldnāt or wouldnāt provide more info except to refer to the station as Jackie Chan or Jackie Chan Radio. Interestingly Spotify has a online Radio Station called Jackie Chan Radio.
Maybe for the interim Iāll refer to the mystery station as āJack E Chan Radioā until we learn more.
Iām sure the LPON licence holder will know more if someone wishes to delve further with investigations.
Radio Austral is still producing a live stream broadcast via their website:
https://radioaustral.com.au/
And looking at the ACMA website, a relative of one of Radio Australās directors still owns the 87.8MHz LPON licence in Sydneyās South West.
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