Major upgrade and expansion project 1994

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Radio National and Radio Regional FM services at the
             SOUTHERN TASMANIA                                 east coast sites of Bicheno and Swansea, and the
                                                               rearrangement and upgrading of FM services on the west
           MAJOR UPGRADE AND                                   coast. This rearrangement consisted of the changing of
                                                               feeding arrangements of the FM Regional Radio services
           EXPANSION PROJECT                                   from 7QN, Queenstown to Waratah. In addition, new Radio
   In conjunction with the project being carried out in        National services were installed at the west coast sites.
Northern Tasmania, work has also been undertaken on a             The third stage of the work involves the construction of
major project in Southern Tasmania. The Southern               four new translator facilities around the Hobart area. These
Tasmania project involves the aggregation of the Southern      sites which are due for completion by 30 October 1994 are
Cross Network from Northern Tasmania into Southern             located at Orford, Cygnet, Geeveston and Dover. At this
Tasmania, as well as the upgrade of the ABC/SBS ser-          stage, most of the external and internal plant work is com-
vices and National FM services.                               plete at these sites and only the power and telephone ser-
   Specifically, the work conducted in Southern Tasmania      vices need to be connected before the sites are completed.
can be divided into three stages. The first stage was the        An interesting point to note regarding this project was
work required to allow Southern Cross into the southern       that the first stage of the project was completed in eight
market of Tasmania by 30 April 1994. This work involved       months from receipt of purchase order from the NTA. This
the installation of a UHF slot antenna and 30 kW UHF TV       is much faster than the twelve to eighteen months which is
transmitter for Southern Cross at Mt. Wellington. The UHF     usually taken for completion of translator facilities. In fact,




                     £                    ’-          N
UHF antenna being placed in position on mast at Taroona.      Building and mast at Dover.

slot antenna will be used to broadcast Southern Cross until   in order to achieve this date, the translators had to be air
the final Mt. Wellington UHF antenna is installed next        freighted from Japan, instead of the normal sea freighting.
summer. In addition, new translator sites were installed at      Many unique and difficult tasks occurred during this
Strahan and Swansea and station upgrades were carried         project. Some of these occurred due to the extreme weath-
out at Queenstown (Mt. Owen), Rosebery (Mt. Read),            er conditions which occur on the sites on the west coast,
Bicheno and Taroona.                                          particularly Mt. Owen. At Mt. Owen, the only access to the
  The second stage of the work planned for completion by      site is via four wheel drive vehicles with large drops both
30 June 1994 involved the upgrade of FM services in           sides of the road and a very steep and winding road. Our
Southern Tasmania. This work involved the installation of     staff did a magnificent job to get all the external plant and

6 — The Broadcaster, July 1994
 internal plant material up this site and installed in a very
 short time.
    Another interesting incident occurred at Mt. Wellington
after the installation of the UHF slot antenna. One night, a
cable drum which weighs nearly two tonnes, was moved
five metres sideways by the wind which was blowing at
over 160 km/h and fell onto the newly installed UHF feed-
er. This caused a short circuit between the inner and outer
of the feeder and tripped the VSWR protection of the
Southern Cross transmitter putting them off air. Luckily,
Southern Cross was only transmitting test pattern but it
does show the extreme weather conditions that can occur
at Mt. Wellington.
    The external plant work on this project was conducted
by a lines crew from Victoria and another made up of staff
from Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern
Territory. These people all worked extremely hard under
difficult conditions.
    The internal plant work was carried out by staff from
Victoria and local Hobart operations staff. They too did a
magnificent job and completed their work in the required
time.
    The final part of the Southern Tasmania project will be
the completion of the work at Mt. Wellington. This work
involves the installation of Band |, Band lI/lil and UHF
antennas and radome on the new concrete tower and the
installation of a new Band | transmitter and FM transmit-
ters. This work is programmed for the 1994/95 summer.

                                          MARK STEVENS




Mast thrust block formwork and steelwork in place, Strahan.     Tower at Cygnet.

                                                                                   The Broadcaster, July 1994 -7