That’s the definite drawback of a paywall, even if it’s only a piecemeal one. But I can’t see what else would work to deter bad actors quite frankly. It’s appalling that this seems to be exclusively occurring with the Australian nodes- not a good look.
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It would be a shame if you had to do this, as it’s been a pleasure to DX on your tuners at no charge. If anything, it should be optional and not a mandatory thing.
Blocking VPN access, yes. But there are some who tend to use the DX tuners on iPhones with iCloud Private Relay turned on, surely there’s a way to retain access to the tuners on such devices with this feature turned on? Technically it’s not a VPN, rather an encryption feature within the Safari browser.
I mean given the most likely culprit is posting in this thread and explaining their methods, I think this can very swiftly come to a head.
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Hi all.
Such a shame that the Australian webservers are being abused like this. I noticed that the Mildura webserver was off for a prolonged period and wondered if there was a connection.
It’s a pity about having to remove the bandwidth options too. I sometimes have a tune around with it set to 114 kHz bandwidth as it’s a good compromise between excellent selectivity and receiving RDS, and also reduces the distortion on loud stations when they are weak signals and the auto bandwidth setting would otherwise be 56 kHz.
I hope they get bored and give up soon!
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Can you please stop with this obsession with assuming that it was me? Totally not me at all. It seems like everyone is deciding to use me as a target here for something that I wasn’t even involved in or didn’t even do. I’m really disappointed with the way this thread (and the Radio Data System (RDS) thread) is going at the moment. That reminds me of when Rob2144 assumed I was the one tuning his Sunny Coast tuner to 89.5 Triple J, when clearly, it’s not me. As many members said, it was always like that when I logged on. But nope, everyone still believed it was me. Damn.
I was asleep when all of this happened. How can you use me as something for this? That was a message posted before the events later on occurred, and I have no involvement with the RDS Google spreadsheets.
This is still a negative target towards me. Again, I have no involvement in this.
If certain members continue to use me as a potential target for stuff like this, then I will be stepping back from MediaSpy until the negativity goes away. I don’t want to have to do this, but I may have to do it, if that means protecting my reputation on the forums. So can those involved in using me for stuff like this please stop now? Thank you.
Apologies to some who are having to read this, but I feel this negativity towards me might be getting a bit too much for me at the moment.
NEWSFLASH: I went to see if there was Newcastle tropo about in Sydney on the TVCL TEF servers this evening and sure enough, the mysterious troll set 3 of the TVCL tuners to 105.77 JJJ. First discovered it when I went to the TVCL North TEF server to DX. After this, I went to check all the other TVCL servers, 2 more of them were also set to 107.77 JJJ by the troll, and the other 2 were on normal DX frequencies. I’ve just gone and fixed them by changing the frequencies to open ones or distant stations.
I’m honestly getting tired of the troll trying to break the servers. Five of the currently active servers are under complete lockdown at the moment, either locked to admin or requires tuning password, meaning no one can DX remotely.
Just trying the TVCL North server now and the most interesting thing I can find is ABC Classic FM on 98.7 from Manning River at 292 km. It’s slowly fading in & out.
What is the local Muslim station on 107.9 on the Sydney servers btw? I’ve not been able to find that listed anywhere.
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It’s a 500 watt Special Event station with TX in Hurstville, i think it’s only on the Radcomm database.
Up here Move FM dominates on that frequency, but can be nulled out to get the Muslim broadcast.
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It’s a TCBL scheduled to run until 15th February, but is surprisingly still going as of 17th February. One MediaSpy user, however, thought it was a pirate radio station. Oops.
Here’s more information on that TCBL in case you missed it, as per @tvcl’s post…
Makes me wonder if they’re going to apply for a permanent community broadcasting license? If so, that’ll eliminate Move FM Lithgow on 107.9 FM, which will make the repeater from Katoomba on 99.5 FM the only Move FM station that can be received in the Greater Sydney area.
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There’s a new licence for March now it seems, though it says ‘not granted’:
So not sure why it’s broadcasting at the moment.
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Furthest stations that are semi-permanent (fading in and out) are usually:
- North: Manning River 292 km
- West: Orange/Central Tablelands 207 km
- South-west: Canberra 234 km
- South: Batemans Bay 227 km
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Thanks guys for the information about the TCBL station and the fringe signals that can be received on the Sydney web servers.
Maybe one day I’ll catch some E-skip on one of the webservers, but they either happen overnight UK time or I’ve just missed them. Time’s fast running out for that now.
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I’ve updated all the Sydney TEF servers to the latest version of FM-DX Webserver (1.3.5) which features an updated UI. However, not all plugins have been updated by their authors yet, so some functionality is temporarily missing.
To combat trolling (and now DDoS attacks also, with the troll trying to bring down the servers completely), my servers have now implemented a block on VPNs. Other Australian TEF server operators have also implemented this measure or are in the process of doing so. Hopefully, this will resolve the troll issues.
Screenshot of the new user interface:
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Just put it behind a Cloudflare Tunnel that would help against the dDOS attacks.
I’ve found it doesn’t help much if at all, and thats with mine being behind Cloudflare already.
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Some updates on the Sydney servers…
Antennas
North
As the TVCL North antenna was below the roof line, it wasn’t performing so well. It has now been relocated to a higher location above the omnidirectional antenna on an extension pole where it can now see the horizon. Earlier this morning when there was a bit of tropo lift, the relocated NW aerial picked up signals from Gulgong, Dubbo and Mudgee, which I haven’t been able to catch since the switch to my five-aerial setup (and with the NW antenna previously being below the roof line), so the relocation seems to have improved DX opportunities from the NW.
It has also been mounted in vertical orientation to provide polarisation diversity, as all the other yagis are in horizontal orientation. The vertical polarisation also restores the quality of reception of the Central Coast community radio stations to RDS decode levels, as they broadcast in vertical polarity. Interestingly, some of the stations require manually setting the bandwidth for RDS decodes. 94.1 seems to work best with 114 kHz, while 96.3 works best with 133 kHz. Hopefully, it’ll also bring back DX reception of vertically polarised stations like Great Lakes FM, which also hasn’t been received since I switched to all horizontal Yagis.
It’s a bit closer to the omnidirectional S-dipole than what I’d like (with potential cross-aerial interference), but I probably shouldn’t be adding any more masts to my rooftop 
, so it’s a compromise that seems to give acceptable results.
Other Yagis
The remainder of the yagi aerials have been rotated anti-clockwise by ~8° to what’s shown in the diagram below. The aim is to get everything within +/-22.5° of an aerial. Unfortunately, the NW aerial is pointing a bit too far to the east than what I had wanted (I had asked for 338°, but it looks to actually be pointing at about 350°). Consequently, there’s a bit more of an overlap between the NW/NE aerials, and a bit more of a gap between the NW and West aerials.
Diagram showing transmitters +/-22.5° of each aerial:
Diagram showing updated antenna ‘farm’:
Software
VPN ban
As with most of the other Australian TEF servers, due to abuse (trolling + attempting to crash the servers through DDoS attacks), a VPN ban has now been implemented.
Bandwidth switch
As the VPN ban has now been implemented, the bandwidth switch has returned to some servers on a trial basis, as some stations (e.g. Coast FM, Today’s Country) seem to decode RDS better with manual bandwidth settings.
Webserver plug-ins
Plug-ins have now been updated and restored to the TVCL servers:
Additional servers
Sixth server
There is a sixth TVCL server that’s been active privately this whole time as my test/private server. The public servers cover all the receivable stations pretty well – with the exception of Kix Country, which only seems to come in well on the sixth server. Not sure if it’s worth making a sixth server available just for the sake of Kix Country. The sixth server is connected to another S-shaped dipole (but sitting on top of my shed rather than top of my roof).
Potential seventh server
The ring type FM dipole on the TV antenna mast isn’t currently connected to anything at the moment. Probably not worth getting another TEF for it, since it doesn’t really pull in additional compared to the other aerials.
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After being targeted with over 5000 hits within 5 mins from multiple VPNs on my server this morning, this has been the best addition to the webservers, also with Noobish being able to block VPN’s from his end should stop the vile individual from pissing everyone off!
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Great write up @TVCL.
I’ve got the scanner working and making logs. Here’s the stations I typically get.
And the logs here (each station only logged on first RDS reception):
https://www.fraz.link/fm-dx-log.html (edit: currently offline, RPi zero crashed)
I’ve noticed an odd phenomemon of 0.8MHz spaced peaks of noise, some of which you can faintly hear 93.3 MHz SBS radio which is a very strong station here. At first I through it was noise from electronics but I’m not running anything unusual at the moment. I do have an ebike charger that makes terrible AM noise at certain spaces on the band, but it’s unplugged. I first noticed it on the weekend and throught it was electronics RF noise, then it went away without changing anything.
Since I can hear echos of 93.3MHz I wonder if it’s some sort of antenna overload?
Any ideas what’s causing it? Or seen anything similar?
Here’s another screen shot of the spectrum with red dots above the noise/SBS peaks, compare with the one I posted above.
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Being as though you’re not far away from the transmitter, it’s possible it’s harmonics stemming from an overload condition. SBS Radio in your case is by far the most powerful (96kW vs 12kW from the same mast)
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Just on the TVCL North one now and 97.9 ABC Classic FM from Coffs Harbour is slowly fading up & down, which, if my calculations are correct is a little over 450 km. The Manning River ABCs are also in at fair levels. Is this improved tropo, or is it also down to the changes you’ve made to the aerial? Thanks.
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