AM and FM DX

Central Coast radio transmitter works have been postponed one day, till Friday morning due to the weather, (high winds & possible showers).
Adjust your DX’ing times accordingly.

2NBC (90.1) is currently running much reduced power. As a result, 2BS Sofala is there about 50% of the time via aircraft scatter on the Sony, with NBC barely audible. On the Tecsun, NBC is stronger using the correct polarisation.

I can usually receive a decent signal of 2NBC in this location, but 90.1 is just static for me at the moment as far as I can tell.

Also, not sure if it’s been mentioned yet but there’s currently temporary Voice Of Islam broadcasts on 91.6 and 107.9 here in Sydney. Exactly why they need two FM frequencies I’m not sure, but at least they are running different programing on both stations. Not sure if I’ll be able to get the Eastern Creek Raceway broadcast that’s on 107.9 from tomorrow, but I’ll certainly try and report back on that.

Hearing about your trip to US started me wondering about FM demphasis settings. Can some of our engineering friends advise if the correct dephasis circuitry is incorporated into FM receivers sold in Australia to match the AUS standard of transmission that I think is 50us.

The reason for the question being that the US has a different setting (75??) so would an Australian receiver sound different when listening to US FM stations than Australian FM? Would it have more high frequency response for example? And vice versa, if you brought a US purchased receiver back to Australia, would the high frequencies be slightly lower?

Or perhaps I’ve not idea what I’m talking about :blush:

:no_bell:

A post was merged into an existing topic: triple j

Some distant signals heard today while driving around the hills out the back of Brisbane:

98.3 Now FM Moree (double checked this one, was playing music in time with ZZZ Lismore and IDed as Now)
95.9 Racing Radio (presumably also Mt Dowe?)
Mt Dowe ABCs on 99.1, 99.9
101.9 Paradise FM Ballina
RDS reception from 100.7 Hot FM Toowoomba

Also heard what appeared to be racing radio on 102.7. Normally around here that frequency is taken by Toowoomba, but didn’t think they did racing on that station. Any ideas what else it could have been?

According to their website, 102.7 in Toowoomba airs racing radio from 8am until 5pm Saturdays.

There you go, that was it. Thought it must have been, signal was very strong and was received when Hot FM was giving me RDS, so it makes sense. Thanks

Close TVC, but you’ve got it the wrong way around
Australian FM has 75us pre-emphisis & the US has 50us.
If you used an American FM radio here, there’d be more top end, & it’d sound tinny, an Australian FM radio used in the US would sound somewhat flat.

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Today, I gave my American radio purchase (an Insignia HD Radio, as posted in the Digital Radio thread) a run back here in Oz (now that I am back!).

Local experiences are a bit of a mixed bag with this radio.

PRO: Good selectivity…
eg. I can hear 99.5 MOVE, 99.9 SWR (either side of the local Rhema 99.7), and 101.1 2LT next to SEA.

PRO: Sound quality on Oz stations is very good (when in stereo - see next point).

CON: Stereo threshold is VERY high… it needs a really good signal to output the stereo signal (not even a station that is received perfectly on the Teccy at 30db is good enough, it needs to be 35+ db). This is despite the fact that the Insignia signal meter is still showing 4 bars out of 5 signal strength (=30db for the Tecsun) and showing a ‘STEREO’ indicator.

CON: Doesn’t display RDS here (USA uses RDBS which is very similar, so I suspect RDS only worked on stations with a HD Radio service over there).

As for the HD Radio feature, when I pressed the HD Radio seek buttons, nothing came up! (surprise surprise!).

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Thanks - I had wondered what the situation would be.

Would the correct setting have to be in place for a radio sold in Australia?

Short answer, yes.

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Just reviewing a few things & found I have to make an apology & correction for this statement. No real excuse for the incorrect info, I’d had a big day, but don’t know what I was thinking, it’s basic FM engineering & I even had the pre-emphasis settings stuck in front of my face for 3 months, while I was setting up the new processor.

TVC was correct, Australia/Europe has 50us pre-emphasis & the US has 75us pre-emphasis.
Outcome would be reversed to what I said, use an American radio here & it’d sound a bit flat, use an Australian radio in the US & it would sound a bit tinny/airy.

Sorry guys, I’d better check other posts I made on Saturday night too. :disappointed:

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Thanks for the clarification and the initial response.

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That’s interesting re the use of an American radio here re sound quality.

I didn’t notice any issue with my Insignia HD Radio here on FM sound wise (as per post #274 further above), I will give it another listen then.

To be honest, you won’t notice it without good ears & good headphones or speakers. 25microseconds pre-emphasis isn’t a lot & you have nothing to compare with side by side, different radios sound different too.

Offline, I can switch our processor between both pre-emphasis settings, & can hear the difference, but then that’s the full 50us & 75us pre-emphasis without any de-emphasis reduction.

In a normal situation, the pre-emphasis I put on the modulation signal in the transmission, your receiver takes back off, so what you normally hear out of the speaker, is like it never existed in the first place.

In theory, what you’re actually hearing with a US radio would be -25us emphasis. The Australian 50us broadcast, minus the 75us your radio takes off the modulated signal.

Just as an aside note, in another part of the processing, I inject another 15us pre-emphasis to overcome upper frequency losses when playing mp3’s. Because this pre-emphasis is in the audio, & not part of the added modulation characteristics, your radio doesn’t remove this, so the high frequencies that are stripped from the mp3 encoding processes, are arteficially enhanced, so they sound like they’re there.

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Thanks …

All a bit technical for me, but explains why it wasn’t obvious then.

I don’t normally Dx on the AM band but this quite notably, at 1:30pm EST I am picking up the following at Stanhope Gardens on the car radio.

1566 - 3NE Wangaratta
1557 - 2RE Taree
1494- 2AY Albury
1449- 2MG Mudgee
1350- 2LF Young
1287- 2TM Tamworth
1152- 2WG Wagga
1125- unidentiable
Normal day time reception below 1125

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5MU perhaps? 1RPH Canberra?