ATV-10 Television Transmitter Site, Melbourne, Australia

A look around the transmitter site of ATV Channel Ten Melbourne, Australia. ATV-10 is a commercial television station transmitter with an ERP of 200 KW Analogue Channel 10 & 20KW Digital on Channel 11. The ATV-10 site also is home to Melbourne's DAB+ Digital Radio Services as well as most of Melbourne's commercial FM radio stations (all running 55kw ERP). The transmitter site is located atop Mount Dandenong on the Eastern outskirts of Melbourne.

[@linomarongiu53]

Fantastic compliment.

[@vk3crg]

Glad you enjoyed it Ben. I work for Ten so am lucky that to be able to take this video. Hope to catch you on air one day soon. 73, Craig VK3CRG

[@vk3crg]

Thanks Joel, I work for Ten in Melbourne in a technical role, so get to peek into areas where most cannot see. 73, Craig VK3CRG

[@peteroc7395]

Thank you very much for this I always wondered what was inside that building kind regards VK3FBEN

[@vk3crg]

No worries at all! :) Craig VK3CRG

[@mjc2000au]

I recently got a look at your channel, it's brilliant, especially the VK3RTV, didn't think Amateur TV existed anymore. I volunteered in a technical capacity at a Community Radio station for nearly 15 years on and off. I'm amazed, although not surprised that a lot of cooling pipes are used, both air and water, especially the amount of heat that can be produced, and air-con just simply doesn't cut it for that amount of transmitters.

[@dash8brj]

Nice video Craig! all fascinating but some of that stuff was amazing, especially the size of that transmitter tube, the kinetic UPS with its 4 tonne flywheel and some of those massive "coax" jumpers :) Cheers Ben VK2FRO

[@JoffaDan]

Nice one Craig. Now I know never to fly near Mt Dandenong lol.

[@vk3crg]

Hi Theo! Melbourne turns off analogue on December 13th this year. Hope to catch you out and about on air soon. I went out portable on Monday this week. 73, Craig VK3CRG

[@vk2btc]

Makes my IC-7200 and a long wire look rater pathetic. We need more Australian broadcast engineers. Amateur radio in high schools would be a good start. Great video Craig. I hope they'll let you climb the tower next time their doing maintenance.

[@vk3crg]

Nothing wrong with a 7200 and long wire! It can transmit further than all the equipment in the Ten set up :-) There are some schools getting involved in the F-Call and students getting their licence along with scouts, cubs and girl guides. Not sure about climbing the tower. You can't tell from this video but the tower is about 200 metres tall. It's a whopper! I may actually put up a short video so people can see how huge the tower is. Hope to chat on HF to you one day. 73, Craig VK3CRG

[@vk3crg]

Yeah it would not be good to get too close to the tower :-) I'm really looking forward to your next video!

[@marty6980]

Shame most of this is non-functional now, with the change to digital.

[@elliotsaxon7070]

Don’t know much about this. So are they only using the one tower now?

[@LawsForever]

On all high power transmitters you see these sharply bent power out tubes. Are these housing coax cables or are they sort of waveguides? If the latter, this - I assume - would create huge VSWRs.

[@willrobbinson1]

they use 90 elbows everywhere & doesn't seem to be a problem

[@bineshooter]

They are ridgid line feeders. They are not wave guids they would be massive if they were for that freq. Basically they are a rigid 50 ohm coax cable for high power. A typical coax cable has an outer shield ,foam dilectric and copper conductor likewise those have a large outer copper tube and air dilectric and a smaller copper tube as the centre conductor. The diameter of the tube and spacing give the ridgidline it's 50 ohm impedance. Anything smaller like semi ridgid heliax would have to much loss and heat up. Connectors typically on the ends are normally EIA flange

[@EMRJoel1330]

nice video craig - Joel VK2FABG

[@ripcurlmoore2077]

Yep.

[@allanegleston13]

this is 2013 video. it is now 2016. so , has au converted over totaly to digital or is there still a mix. in the usa there still is some but almost all of the hi power went over in 2009

[@vk3crg]

+allan egleston Australia has now 100% switched over to digital television. This occurred 10th December 2013. There are now no analogue TV signals at all in Australia at all.

[@allanegleston13]

thanks for answering my question de kf6uxj

[@jackbollingmoore7554]

@@vk3crg Digital TV was launched in Australia on New Year's Day 2001

[@spectremuffin]

That kinetic flywheel cant be as efficient as a battery backup or capacitor bank can it?

[@vk3crg]

Yep it sure is! To power multiple high power TV transmitters you'd need a huge number of batteries etc...the fly wheel does it with ease. It's an ingenious idea :)

[@spectremuffin]

Awesome!

[@willrobbinson1]

its a shame but all those analogue nec (and other) tx's & support equipment are now scrap metal over night when switched over to digital what a wast, but is that flywheel ups still going? good stuff thanx

[@vk3crg]

Hi Will, yeah the Pillar flywheel UPS is still working today! :) Craig

[@HunterFK88]

Which country from?

[@smophie6260]

Australia

[@neilforbes416]

Not ATV-10, but Station ATV-Melbourne. The channel is of NO importance whatsoever. It is the STATION that counts. Station ATV-Melbourne started on 45 to 52 Mhz(VHF Ch.0) but, like its Queensland affiliate, Station TVQ-Brisbane, also on 45 to 52 Mhz, was moved from the bottom end of VHF Band 1, up to near the top of VHF Band 3, 208 to 215 Mhz(VHF Ch.10) in order to make room for SBS Television in 1980 when they commenced operation on VHF Ch.0 and UHF Ch.28. Australia's analogue TV had 13 VHF channels, 0 to 5, 5A and 6 to 11, then in the late 1970s added 49 UHF channels, 21 to 69, however not all the UHF channels were allocated. 21 to 27 went unused, as did 35 to 39. Station ATV, operated by Austrama Television Ltd., and formerly known as Ansett Television as it was originally owned by ATA Airline head honcho, Reg Ansett, is located in the Melbourne suburb of Nunnawadding, and is famous as the station from which Young Talent Time emanated. The building that houses Station ATV-Melbourne is "Global Television Studios". The channels have no buildings to house them, channels are ethereal, they have no physical presence.

[@vk3crg]

I sort of get what you're talking about but it's also a tad extreme maybe too. The old analogue channel Ten frequency is not used anymore to transmit a picture. Back when this video was taken, it was. Now "Channel Ten" as such is simply choosing a particular MPEG stream in a multiplexed set of MPEG streams (10,11,1,14,15 & HD MPEG 4 channel 13) all digital. However the logical channel "10" will still get you "Channel 10" even though it's not actually on the old "channel ten" frequency. On the ACMA license the station is still licensed as "ATV-10". You're incorrect however re the location of ATV. The building that houses ATV is not Global TV studios. Ten moved out of there in the 90's. Ten (where I work) is at the Como Centre in South Yarra (Corner of Chapel St & Toorak Road) and that is where the Ten Melbourne news, "The Project" and other programs such as "Have You Been Paying Attention" come out of and where old shows like "That Panel" and "Good Morning Australia" with Bert Newtown were presented live to air Nationally. ATV's studios at South Yarra are a fully-fledged TV station with presentation suite, 24 hour staffed Master Control and fully able to run on it's own if need be. You're maybe getting a tad technical re the "channels have no building to house them". The fact is that Channel Ten Melbourne (type "10" into a TV and it will come up!) is broadcast from South Yarra via a transmitter on Mount Dandenong. It's no different to a building housing a radio station or any other media organisation. You're right (on a weird sort of literal technical level) that the actual Ch10 radio signal isn't housed at the station's headquarters, but the shows and programming that modulate that signal do come from there! :)

[@neilforbes416]

vk3crg, you are not employed by a "channel". Whether old analogue or modern digital, the "channel" has NO physical presence. You are employed by Austrama Television P/L, owners and operators of Station ATV-Melbourne. And by the way, "Moonface" is Bert Newton, not Bert Newtown. He used to work over at Station GTV-Melbourne, alongside Graham Kennedy and Don Lane. and in regional NSW, to get the affiliate, we select Digital Ch.5 but now WIN has gobbled up the regional affiliates of Station TEN(which should've been UTN)-Sydney. Okay, I got the venue wrong but that's because I was going on the building shown in the John Bowles-produced DVD, "Young Talent Time Tells All" made in 2002, but carries the original 2001 TV presentation plus extras. As for studio and transmitter sites, a similar set-up exists here in the Newcastle Region. Station NBN-Newcastle's studios are(for now) located at Mosbri Crescent, down behind Newcastle East Public School, while the transmitter is on Mount Sugarloaf, out past West Wallsend. And Station AMV-Albury's studios are in Albury, NSW but the transmitter site is in Wodonga, Victoria. That's why their call-sign is AMV, not AMN. The third letter in each call-sign is the State Alphabetical Identifier.

[@vk3crg]

I am employed by "Network Ten Holdings" which is what it says on my payslip. Australian Thanks for the clarification on Bert. I KNOW Bert. I don't need you to tell me about him :o I have a video on KZbin with myself and Bert on air on GMA on Ten. He did GMA from ATV for 15 years. WIN are a seperate company to Ten that merely have a contract to re-transmit Ten's programs. WIN is owned by Bruce Gordon. I'm aware of the last letter of callsigns denoting the state. If you do a search for "Austrama Television" it doesn't exist. Austrama is the company Reg Ansett set up back in 1963 when he started the company. Network Ten took over the station years ago and the Austrama name went. I'm not 'employed' by "Austrama".

[@neilforbes416]

What I was getting at is this: TV Channels are ethereal. They have no physical entity whatsoever, but a TV STATION takes up a huge chunk of real estate in a city(in the metropolitan area or one of the suburbs) or a regional town. A TV channel employs NO-ONE but a TV STATION has a huge workforce employed in all aspects of production and administration. What I've always admired Britain for was the way the stations there identified themselves; Thames, ATV, London Weekend, Heritage, Anglia, HTV West, Trident, Granada etc. but here in Australia our TV stations shyly hid themselves behind their channel numbers. ATN, HSV, BTQ, TVW and ADS did briefly identify themselves as Australian Television Network in the late 1980s(logo seen on closing credits of "A Country Practice") but soon went back into hiding behind the Ch.7 in a massive and embarrassing retrograde step. Australian stations have some great corporate names that would inspire great I.D. logos, STW-Perth, for example, "Swan Television", name in Edwardian script in yellow on a black backdrop, white swan on light-blue background inside portrait rectangle and dark blue to represent the water. Image set on left side of screen, a PERFECT station Identification slide.

[@jaymarkmarzo4757]

ASEAN Network Television Transmitter: In Manila BAGUIO Naga Iloilo Cebu And Davao

[@elliotsaxon7070]

Don’t know much about this. So are they only using the one tower now?

[@vk3crg]

Yeah, Ten's tower in Ornata Road Olinda is the largest on the mountain. This is because Ch10 used to be Ch0. Being Ch0 and therefore on a lower frequency (50 MHz), meaning their antenna stack was larger than all other networks - the lower the frequency, the larger the antenna is to be resonant at the transmit frequency. The larger the antenna the greater the wind and weight load the tower has to be built for. DAB+ and all of Melbourne's main FM stations come off Ten's tower too as it can carry a large antenna load. Nine's old tower next to the Sky High Restaurant & lookout was literally falling down, Seven's was shorter and smaller, so it was decided all 3 commercial networks could transmit from the same site into a wideband antenna. This was better as the tower is taller (better coverage), designed for a larger weight (antenna stack etc), also easier for maintaining everything in one location. Also the Ten site has a huge backup power supply (shown in the video) that can keep all stations on the air during the time the generator is starting, so a power cut doesn't interrupt transmission. The other sites do not have that facility. Seven's old site at Eyre Road is the backup site for all 3 commercial stations.

[@elliotsaxon7070]

@@vk3crg thanks for all the information!!