Random Radio

It wouldn’t be strictly true as I did change stations at times, but I spent a good portion of the time between Broadford, Vic up until I’d got past Jerilderie, NSW listening to the artist formerly known as 3SR on 95.3. That’s nearly 3 hours of driving, or about 250km by road

Likewise if the cricket had started a bit earlier, I probably would have been on 99.1 from Mt Dowe on my drive back from south of Narrabri until I’d got past Goondiwindi in Queensland

Same here.

I am a REAL dial twiddler, even in the car, but similarly, I know it would be possible to listen to any of those Mt Cenn Cruaich services from Tamworth (where reception is okay) to Dubbo … distance 320 km

And Mt Moombil ABCs, listenable from Kew to Ballina… a distance of nearly 400km.
Though 90.7 and 92.3 will struggle a bit since they are at a lower power.

If you wanted to listen to commercial radio during these stretches however, you’d have to change stations several times.

For me, having Sun FM Mildura on the car radio one morning about 10kms west of Hay until about 5km before the SA border on the Sturt. Being flat country and with a directional antenna system, the Mildura FM’ers get out a long way.

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The longest time I’ve spent listening to a FM station in the car is 100.1 Triple J. I started listening to it from roughly north of Cann River VIC, all the way to Cooma NSW.
Although the reception was quite poor around Cann River, I’m amazed I could receive it there at all.
It cleared up once I got to NSW.

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Brown Mountain gets to Orbost in normal conditions, but as you say reception doesn’t set the world on fire in the Education State.

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This site has really gone downhill fast - someone wrote a comment like “how annoying” and it was published, then removed - which makes comment 5 just not make any sense whatsoever.

New ownership and they should really think about letting people actually have opinions which are good or bad

I’ve been bringing my good digital radio into work,wasn’t sure if it would pick up any digital stations but it does . I’ve been switching from River 94.9 on the FM band to OMG or Easy Radio on DAB. I like having more choices of what to listen to,one of my workmates said she might buy a digital radio one day too to bring to work

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Yeah same at my work. A couple of people have recently gotten on board with DAB radios. It’s all about the extra choice.

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Yeah agree on that Radio Today site. Very, very selective on which comments they publish.

A question tailor- made for this thread- why doesn’t RN have transmitters in the regional centres surrounding Melbourne? I know the transmitter is in the NW suburbs; places like Bendigo and Ballarat probably receive a decent enough signal from 621 kHz. Areas such as Gippsland and Shepparton, though, would probably be deficient. Even Albury has a relatively low powered AM tx on 990 kHz. I think there was a proposal for RN to operate from Mt. Tassie on 95.9 MHz, but this has seemingly been shelved.

Compare this to the regional areas surrounding Sydney- Newcastle, Wollongong, Nowra, Goulburn and Lithgow all have their own RN transmitters. The Central Coast and Southern Highlands don’t, but each omission can be justified. The Central Coast has a choice between 576 and 1512 (Newcastle), whilst 576 adequately covers the Southern Highlands because it originates from the SW suburbs of Sydney.

You might remember back in early 2009 that there was a proposal for RN to be removed from 1431kHz in Wollongong, replacing it with ABC Newsradio. This was when WIN (in Wollongong & Narooma) & NBN was still transmitting in analogue on VHF-3, which therefore wasn’t possible for ABC NewsRadio to transmit on 90.9MHz until mid-2013, after analogue TV transmissions in both Wollongong & Newcastle have ceased. There was enough backlash for it to not go ahead, which would otherwise forced RN listeners in the Illawarra having to listen to it via 576 from Sydney or 603 from Nowra instead.

Same thing to the north of Brisbane where there is no RN transmitter for Nambour/Sunshine Coast with the 4QG signal from Bald Hills in the north of Brisbane giving enough signal plus overlap from Gympie/Cooloola.

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Yes it’s odd that many far flung outback communities have access to a local transmission of RN, yet there are a number of major regional centres which don’t.

Spectrum space is obviously the issue, and obviously in hindsight it could have been planned better.

Allocating VHF 3-5 to analogue TV didn’t help in a lot of cases.

I think ACMA should look at restacking FM in some areas. Sunshine Coast would be a good start. Even up the output power of some services to save frequencies.

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Yes, but Newcastle should be first!

The ABC’s website indicates that Radio National 621 from Melbourne covers about two thirds of the state, at least with “adequate” coverage.

RN 621: http://www2b.abc.net.au/reception/frequencyfinder/asp/details_test.asp?transmissionid=2951&presdir=

Shepparton also comes under adequate coverage from Radio National 756 in Wangaratta.

RN 756: http://www2b.abc.net.au/reception/frequencyfinder/asp/details_test.asp?transmissionid=5033&presdir=

Given the size of RN’s audience share that’s probably enough without warranting a local transmitter in Shepparton

In the daytime, it would be fine, but fading at night could be an issue.

I’m still not satisfied. 2RN has a similar coverage area to 3RN, viz:

http://www2b.abc.net.au/reception/frequencyfinder/asp/details.asp?transmissionid=4536&presdir=

Newcastle, Muswellbrook, Mudgee, Orange, Canberra, Goulburn, Nowra and Wollongong are all in the adequate zone.

That’s an option that ACMA have ben thinking about, for at least the last 10 years, from conversations I’ve had with planning engineers there, but they wanted to get the digital TV re-stack out of the way first.

Re-stacking FM radio is a huge task, (TV was simple by comparison), planning, & re-stacking FM could take 10-15 years to implement & get done.

Who’s going to pay to re-tune or replace all the FM TX’s & Antenna systems, the older TX’s aren’t a simple mouse click to change frequencies & not all TX antenna systems are wide-band, many single station antennas would be frequency optimised (built for use on one specific frequency).

The Government payed for the TV re-stack, I doubt they’re going to cough up funds for every FM transmitter in Australia.

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They should only need to concentrate on the problem areas, like Newcastle/Hunter/Central Coast, Sunshine Coast and perhaps a few others?

Oh by the way, @RFBurns, speaking of changing frequencies, have there been any developments with 2CCC Gosford in terms of moving from 96.3 or relocating the Tx to Mt Elliott?