Radio Data System (RDS)

No AF listed on RDS Spy.

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Thanks for the feedback & all the effort with the RDS Spy image posts of the DX RDS catches. Always great seeing these :slight_smile:

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Donā€™t they have different ads?

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93.1 Bundaberg used to have AF with 103.5 Wide Bay before changing format to the hit network - and they had different breakfast programs IIRC !

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103.5 or 101.9? 93.1 Bundaberg and 101.9 Wide Bay shared the Sea FM branding (and CHR format) prior to SCA consolidating the Today, Sea, Star and Hot brands into Hit.

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Oh yes - it was when there were 2 Sea FMā€™s.

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Yep, even 88.1 can be heard clearly in Cranbourne. 89.1 makes it well into the city according to some of our regular listeners. Reliable reception of 89.1 seems to stop around Clayton/Moorabbin/Waverley.

Sea did that a bit, trying to make up for the theoretical lost reception in the Valley (before 97.9 came about). As @AustralianAerial posted Star did this right up until the end, both visually and on-air. I donā€™t know how well it worked, itā€™s not like anyone actually listened to them over Fox after they became effectively a relay (except for local breakfast).

They may do, Iā€™m just going by what Iā€™ve seen on the car radio radio lately (hence no PI, PTY, AF etc in the Google Sheets).

Not sure on that one, but Iā€™ve never paid close enough attention to notice. They originally had RDS on only 99.5, but added it to Mount Taylor later. Makes me think they might be running different RDS for the different feeds of TRFM.

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94.9 3JOY has RT+ of sorts.
Instead of the usual RT+ title & artist labels it has:
Programme.Now
&
Programme.Next
title fields. Only problem is that the RT+ doesnā€™t appear to have been implemented properly (if I use RDS SPY as a guide) as I havenā€™t seen those fields populated with the Now & Next program names as displayed in the regular RT.

I wonder if itā€™s displaying correctly in vehicles with RT+
Anyone in Melbourne know? Just a curiosity of mine :slight_smile:

Image from RDS Spy

3JOY-J - Copy

UPDATE: The RT+ labels do change from Programme to Song Title & Artist labels, but like above example the RT+ fields arenā€™t being populated.

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Has 96.5 3INR ever broadcasted with RDS previously?

Hereā€™s a pix of their MPX. It shows a RDS carrier at 57kHz, but no RDS data decoded.
A waste of signal powerā€¦

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Maybe internally generated RDS in there TX thatā€™s never been configured with any data therefore nothing shows on peopleā€™s radios??

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A Radio History question - did the ABC at least trial RDS on Triple J in the early 2000s? Maybe just around regional NSW? I recall reading something like that 15 or so years on aus.radio.broadcast but donā€™t remember the full details.

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Yes, I believe they did. Some RNs as well. I think RN Griffith had the display of ā€˜RADNATā€™.

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ABC RN as a station name would look better.

If there were trials, I wonder why they stopped, given most commercials and many community stations now use it.

Typical ABC reason would be funding. ABC has the largest number of transmitters Australia wide so it would be costly.

Also the way the STLs worked back then (and mostly still do I guess) for ABC in regional areas would have made it difficult to distribute the RDS data. They would need to inject RDS at every major transmitter site and maintaining changes to the radio text (RT) field remotely would have been difficult back then.

My guess (someone technical please elaborate!) is most regional ABC transmitter sites simply receive a digital audio feed (MPEG Layer II) mostly via Optus satellite. As opposed to a local community or commercial station using a short range microwave STL that sends a pre-modulated FM MPX+RDS analog encoded signal ready to broadcast. The latter method means the RDS encoder is physically located at the studio and they can easily make changes to RDS data remotely.

ā€¦ of course ABC doesnā€™t actually own those transmitters any more and the amount they pay to rent them is shown as a separate line in their appropriation because itā€™s a three-way deal ā€¦

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I recall that GeoScience Australia was one of the parties involved in the implementation of RDS on the Triple J transmitters (and some others it seems, unknown to me, thanks @dxnerd ) in regional parts. The trial was used to improve the precision of GPS data coming from satellites for land based GPS navigation devices, used by farmers such as in their tractors & harvesters. Technology was evolving at the time where some of this farm tech was using GPS navigation & GPS data on/for crop fields etc.

I donā€™t know why exactly the plug was pulled on what Iā€™ll term a RDS trial, perhaps precision from new GPS satellites was sufficient? Funding might be a factor too?
Thereā€™s a lot of add-on usages for RDS, one common add-on is traffic data that a couple of companies use on commercial FM radio station in the cities & several larger regional centres in parts of Australia for reporting traffic loads & hazards to peopleā€™s GPS Nav devices - that power lead also acts as a FM BCB antenna to receive the traffic data.

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Triple J were using RDS in Sydney way back in 1993. A friends parents had a Holden Calibra and it had an RDS enabled radio.

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I can report that 2SEA FM community radio here in Eden does not have a compliant PI code.

Car radio doesnā€™t display RDS but portable Sangean does.

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Did 2EAR 102.9 Narooma have RDS?

If you have time & interest you could check to see if Mix & Hit Tuggeranong transmitters have RDS activated. Also the RT didnā€™t change on 104.7 & 106.3 when I was last through there.

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Yes, it did.

I will be in Canberra tomorrow, and plan to check Tuggeranong too, from memory both 100.7 and 107.1 relay Black Mt RDS (as did 1WAY).

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