I will buy then. Hate buying online at the best of times, especially when there’s difficult access of after sales support.
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Some notes for this radio…
Mine came with v2.0 (latest beta v2.00.9 available in the Discord).
The LNA is useless when using an external antenna, and massively degrades reception due to overload. Using the telescopic antenna, it seemed to be a minor improvement in some cases, but I’d have to test a location with very little noise.
The signal meter is off by 5dBm, although this could vary from radio to radio. Therefore, I set the “level offset” to “+5 dB”.
The antenna that came with mine measures 75cm long (excluding its base).
As I mentioned a few posts back, adding a wire can further improve signals. Cut a piece of wire exactly 75cm in length, and attach to where is shown in the image. Don’t underestimate the improvement this can make. Also, with this wire added, the antenna is tuned perfectly around 97-98MHz, right in the middle of the band.
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My TEF came with v1.20 B1.
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Thanks! I’ll have to try the wire trick.
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Stream is up. Nothing permanent, but testing it out. https://list.fmdx.pl/
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Working very well over here! We’re trying to get the stuff sorted so that the transmitter information will display based on PI/PS for Australian services in the bottom right as it does on the servers in Europe, so hopefully that will be in place soon. 
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I can hear Bendigo with RDS so it’s working quite well. 95.1 Gippsland and 106.3 Flow also received strongly. Five listeners connected, so didn’t stay for long.
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Thanks. Unfortunately the (free) server however is too limiting and throttles even more after I’ve reached the limit, so I’ll have to seek a new solution.
On second thoughts, it might be good enough. I’m limited with how long I can stream, but I wasn’t intending to stream 24/7 anyway.
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Not sure what you’re using, but just in case it’s helpful - I’m running mine in an SSH tunnel via Oracle Cloud. Just on the free tier and it seems to work pretty stably (it’s been up for about a week without restarting now). I’m using London but I think they have at least one Australian data centre too.
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Thanks for your help, Oracle Cloud is on air now!
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I’m up at Morisset for a quick one day stay, and did a quick DX on FM:
87.6 - Faith FM (RDS Faith FM)
87.8 - 3ABN/Newy878
88.0 - Raw FM
90.5 - 2HD
92.5 - ABC Central Coast
93.3 - Radio50plus
94.1 - Today’s Country 941
94.9 - Rhema Central Coast
96.3 - Coast FM
96.5 - 2CHR
97.3 - Lake Macquarie FM
97.5 - (Faint) 2HD
98.1 - ABC News Radio/Power FM Hunter Valley
99.7 - Rhema Newcastle
100.5 - 2RPH Newcastle
101.3 - hit101.3 aka Sea FM
102.1 - triple j Newcastle
102.9 - Triple M aka KOFM
103.7 - 2NURFM
104.5 - Star1045
104.9 - ABC News Radio Upper Hunter
105.3 - NewFM
106.1 - ABC Classic Newcastle
106.9 - hit106.9 aka NXFM
107.7 - Triple M aka 2GO
Some notes:
- The poor guys in Morisset get a double serving of the Seventh Day church with 2 stations dedicated to them.
- I was low down near Bonnells Bay, so not in any great DXing points but did notice Faint Fading of Port Macquarie ABC’s and Faint ABC Metro Main Stations.
- I also got to hear Radio 1629 Newcastle for the first time.
- Poor ABC News Radio Central Coast (98.1) goes from been interfered with by i98 to getting interfered with by Power FM Hunter, they need to change the frequency…
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Yes, lots of co-channelling here, 96.3, 96.5, 97.3 are permanently jammed in these parts and do/have interference in their own service area as well, you can add in 94.1 and 94.9 during tropo.
We still have NBN-3 to thank for this, even though that was switched off more than 10 years ago now!
During my DXing with the TEF in the last few weeks at home, I’ve found 58 frequencies with 2 or more stations on it. But most are not really an issue as such as they do not interfere with each other within their own service area eg 90.7 2PNN Coffs Harbour and 2JJJ SW Slopes.
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It’s working well.
No other users just now so I took the opportunity to have a full bandscan. You’re getting 102.1/103.7/105.3 Swan Hill quite well even in flat conditions. Albury was there on 103.3 and 106.5, but not 104.1 due to Mold 104.3 splatter. I’ve noticed Mold and Light 89.9 are very wide and splatter over the adjacents. The other Melbourne FMs are quite well behaved.
A lot of the sub metro community stations are running RDS. I noted one with the notorious ‘FFFF’ PI code, I think it was 98.1 Eastern FM.
I assume you’re in the eastern suburbs since Warragul can be received over Bendigo and Ballarat, and Flow FM from Healesville is quite strong.
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Nice log list - thanks.
I’m guessing that your reception of 87.6 - Faith FM would most likely
be Wyee 87.6 FM, if the Faith FM website & accuracy(?) is anything to go by. Or could it be Lake Macquarie or both sites with RDS? 
I was having a look at the Faith FM network around the Sydney area on their website station list/map.
Some things caught my attention.
I thought the 88.0 reception across Sydney was from the Blue Mountains (ex My88 FM) transmitter, but this appears to have disappeared & instead I note Faith FM outlets/icons for 88.0 from the Kurrajong Heights & Campbelltown areas. Can anyone resolve fact from fiction from these?
I also noted a 88.0MHz Faith FM icon for the Balgowlah area, but note it has a ‘Western Sydney’ label, so I just assume it’s been accidentally misplaced here.
Whilst on the way to Manly the other day I did note an o/c on 88.0MHz, but it might well be Raw FM TX at Collaroy Beach that’s lost it program feed or some other mystery o/c.
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That’s correct, 98.1 has FFFF. 92.3 temporarily had 3923 for a couple of days or so, now it’s back to its usual 0000, so not sure what’s going on there.
You’re very right about the “splatter”, images 1 & 2 are 101.9 and 91.5, very clean-looking signals, and images 3 & 4 are 104.3 and 101.1, ouch. Ignore the bump on 101.9, that’s 102.1, as you mentioned.
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Interesting. Well just looking at the trialled PI code of 3923 I could tell you that the PI code would have clashed with the PI code that 3BA Ballarat use. They use 3023. It’s the same PI code for all intensive purposes re the RDS spec, ref the 2nd digit significance.
I had a ramble about this today in the RDS thread on Media Spy, if anyone cares to read.
As @RFBurns recently stated there’s people programming either without sufficient RDS knowledge or more likely in this case, someone who isn’t aware of all the other PI codes used in surrounds. There’s always likely to be conflicts in the larger cities due to the high & growing number of RDS stations in and in the adjoining areas & poor choices of PI codes eg lazily using codes similar to their frequency.
@RFBurns created a demo video of this issue not so long ago.
BTW I reckon I may have informed Eastern FM 98.1 about that poor choice of PI code in the past. Nothing has happened obviously. 
Someone else may like to attempt to try to contact them & try to persuade them to change their PI code.
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Conditions were very flat tonight, flattest I’ve seen for a while, so it was a good test for the TEF to see what it still pull in without natural assistance, and to see if there was anything lurking under the tropo boosted signals.
The majority of what I have been getting was still there, somewhat surprisingly, though just weaker and more suspectible to fading. Still had all main Canberra stations except 2XX and 2JJJ (couldn’t null out 98.3 RN or 101.5 Great Lakes). But no RDS and nearly all mono, 102.3 Classic faded up to stereo a few times. Also had SW Slopes ABCs too, faded a bit at times but was mostly there, no stereo though.
Batemans Bay ABCs still there (except 100.5 News), again only 101.9 Classic faded up to stereo at times, but no 2EC or Power. Weak 2ST on 91.7 from Nowra as well,
Orange high power ABCs also there but weak, no stereo and no commercials. Did hear a weak SKY Racing on 106.7 though. From Bathurst, could still hear 2BS and B-Rock, and a brief weak 2MCE, again no stereo. Was able to null in a weak SKY 89.7 and News 91.3 Lithgow too.
One surprise was hearing a weak but consistent Real FM from Kandos on 97,9, this was unexpected, 93.1 from Mudgee could be heard too but faded in and out a bit, no stereo or RDS.
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Given that community stations aren’t limited to the CRA’s framework, another alternative solution is to convert a station callsign into hexadecimal and derive a four-character PI code accordingly.
For example, 3ZZZ converted into hex renders as follows:
33 5A 5A 5A
From this, one could derive 335A, 35A5, 5A5A, or any number of combinations that would avoid clashing with other similar codes.
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Thank you for getting this working, amazing to choose what you can listen to.
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The guys working on it have done a great job.
I put the ol’ Raspberry Pi 3 to work, had it sitting around for weeks doing little. Sits at around 20% CPU usage.
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