Radio Data System (RDS)

It’s

SEN / TRACK / 91.9

So they’ve gone an added a 3rd line for 91.9 as well.

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I left my tuner on over night on Radio 50+ and can confirm they are running RDS. However it was garbled random characters. I assume my tuner is trying to display”easy listening”. It looks like the signal freehold level is much higher then Rhema / Today’s Country and Coast fm for a full RDS decode. Have to wait for some tropo.

I wonder if Radio 50+ is one of the community stations that @RFBurns referred to as broadcasting under spec?

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Yes it is, 3 of the 4 CC community stations are under power, 1 of the 3 is close on power though but can’t remember which one. 2 of those 3 were over deviating last time I looked (6 months or more ago now) & they were Todays Country & Radio 50+.

I’ll run a check on the CoastFM mod monitor soon & see if any are still over deviating & what RDS injection levels Radio 50+ are running, then I’ll post back.
I can’t reliably comment on the transmit power levels until I go back to the TX site (which mightn’t be for another few weeks), receive strength levels can have all sorts of variables, so Im going on transmitter power output levels measured in the transmitters themselves.

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My guess is Coast FM, that seems to be the best signal at my home. And because they asked for a power increase to help combat the Triple J Taree issue.

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Okay, I’ve done a short term mod monitor test on all 4 CC community stations (I didn’t worry about doing the commercials).
This is what I found on the mod. monitor at the CoastFM studio (I’m not at the studio if you’re wondering, I can remote in from anywhere to do it).
Note: Radio 50+ may have increased it’s transmit power recently, but until I visit the TX site I can’t be sure on these levels, they are received levels at the CoastFM studio & also note, that to minimise the amount of CCI from Triple J Taree into the off air receiver & logger, we use a horizontal receive antenna, even though we transmit vertically, so measured signal strength levels will be down on actual reality signal strength levels.

Radio 50+ 93.3MHz
Signal strength 69dB
Pilot 6.8kHz
RDS 2.7kHz
Deviation maximum I saw was 84.4kHz, it never went under 75kHz

Todays Country 94.1MHz
Signal strength 61dB
Pilot 11.6kHz
RDS 10.9kHz
Deviation mostly between 120-160kHz, the maximum I saw was 219kHz & it never went under 80.1kHz

Rhema CC 94.9MHz
Signal strength 66dB
Pilot 6.3kHz
RDS 2.9kHz
Deviation mostly between 70-73kHz it never went over 75kHz

CoastFM 96.3MHz
Signal strength 68dB
Pilot 6.1kHz
RDS 3.4kHz
Deviation mostly between 70-73kHz it never went over 75kHz

CoastFM actual transmit power I’m not going to say publicly, but lets just say it’s not under ERP. :wink:
I run the CoastFM Pilot at the recommended 9% level & the RDS at the recommended 5% level.

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That’s a good idea, leaving tuner on overnight re RDS data capture. Might do the same in hope of some aircraft scatter that might bring the signal up to RDS level briefly, enough for perhaps a PI code decode.
Looking at the deviation level for Radio 50+ provided by @RFBurns I’m also not too optimistic at decoding much without some tropo & that’s been as scarce as hens teeth in recent times.

Re Wave FM taking longer to decode. That sounds right. This station has a small RDS deviation (low level RDS carrier).

@Ant5476 Re my mentioning of CubicSDR software, I don’t think that has an inbuilt RDS decoder. So maybe other options may need to be investigated.
The cheapo SDR dongles aren’t ‘much chop’ for FM DX, crappy in fact, but useful in seeing/hearing what’s around the local area, useful for RDS decoding info on the stronger signals & great for travel due to their small size.

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Going off those figures provided would Todays Country be the one that is the most below ERP?

It would be hard to split them in strength now as they are all received at moderate strength, and in stereo since my antenna modification. If I had to rank them based on strength, hiss and RDS decode this would be my strongest to weakest at my location.

  1. Radio 50+ Must need a strong clean signal for RDS decode as mine is garbled

  2. Coast fm, hard to tell due to extreme splatter from Cada but RDS decides straight away on 96.35 with stereo signal. Hopefully moves to 91.7 one day.

  3. Rhema CC more hiss then Radio 50+ but some of this hiss is CCI from Power fm. RDS takes quite some time to decode.

  4. Todays Country very hissy, and when the announcer talks sound abit like an am station being slightly off the channel. Is this because of over deviation? First of all CC community stations for full decode of RDS.

So pretty similar in ranking strongest to weakest.

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Somebody might find this interesting & useful.

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/using-an-rtl-sdr-to-decode-broadcast-fm-rds-data-on-android/

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In reply to @Ant5476 list:

Radio 50+ according to my measurements, has a low volume RDS sub carrier, around 3.1% level given they are over deviating at 84.4kHz, that’s why you need a strong clean signal for RDS decode.

I’m pretty sure (by memory at this stage) that Rhema is transmitting at a lower power than Radio 50+, not just what my receive measurements say, so there would be more hiss for you, they also have a low RDS sub carrier volume level, but it’s slightly higher than 50+, so that’s why it takes a while to decode, (receiver probably has to receive a couple of data transmissions before it can work out what to decode).

CoastFM, well yes there’s not much I can do about any of that at the moment.

Todays Country, well what can I say, the really bad transmissions says it all, if they cleaned it up, it’d be a totally different sounding station, they have pretty much everything wrong & breaking licence (even ACMA Technical specifications rules).

The way it sounds could be because of the massive overdrive & over deviation, there’s plenty of power going outside the channel, & what’s inside the channel is much reduced, because it’s being spread so wide. Also a lot of receivers can’t handle much or anything over 120% modulation, so you’ll have all sorts of funny things going on inside the tuner & it’ll put out whatever audio it can, & that might make it sound like an AM station off channel.
Another reason why it’s so hissy is, that the Stereo pilot volume level is so high, so your receiver will be hanging onto & try decoding the stereo sub carriers long after it should’ve switched to the mono sub carrier, which those levels of pilot, your receiver will be trying to decode the stereo to the death of the signal in which mono would normally be impossible to decode.
Theoretically the pilot is only at around 7.2% (which is quite low), but because they are over deviating so much, it’s huge in volume level, same with the RDS sub carrier volume level, it’s no surprise it decodes fast, it’s so loud at over 3 times the volume level of CoastFM RDS sub carriers.

The pilot & RDS sub carriers also make up part of that deviation along with the mono & stereo audio sub carriers, & in their case it makes no difference, as there’s obviously no limiting, however, if they were to have those Pilot & RDS levels of 11.6 & 10.9 kHz & limit the transmission to 75kHz deviation, there’d only be space for 52.5kHz of audio instead of 63.75kHz, thus reducing the bandwidth of the audio & how it sounds.

Todays Country is the best example of how NOT to do FM broadcast transmission, it’s just so wrong on so many levels & with a low transmission power (receive signal strength), that just makes everything else that wrong, so much worse.

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Some new RDS i saw in Melbourne today

KIX Country 89.3 Geelong.
The only KIX outlet I’ve seen with RDS.
Had song info as well

Inner FM 96.5 Heidelberg

North West FM 98.9 Broadmeadows
Basic RDS only

Bizzare RDS from 3VYV 99.1

Other changes

3TSC 89.9 now Light899

3WBC Camberwell now 941 3WBC

Triple M Bendigo now MMM93.5

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Nice selection there. :slightly_smiling_face:

Looking at the RDS List I can see that North West FM must be new, have added.
I know during my recent visits I hadn’t seen North West with RDS, but something in
the dark recesses of my mind tells me I have either seen RDS from North West FM reported once before or I had once seen it once previously briefly. Could be like BACR they have RDS on their standby transmitter, but not their main?

From memory 99.1 Yarra Valley FM use Dynamic PS & use it for their station name & song info. I dare say “Little” in PS field was part of song title/artist info.
RT field used to display: Yarra Valley FM 99.1

3RPP apparently have or did have RDS on 98.7MHz. Did you observe this? Maybe you weren’t in that area & thus out of range. I’m curious to know if their 98.3 Frankston relay broadcast with RDS, certainly 98.7 didn’t have any AF RDS info on last check.

I enjoying seeing your travel log posts.

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Yes. 99.1 uses that damn Dynamic PS and it only ever displays song info.

The “Yarra Valley FM” subtext is static. really should be the other way around.

Yes, 3RPP 98.7 still has RDS… I have seen it reported here before, so didn’t mention it. BUT 98.3 does NOT have RDS or stereo (which 98,7 does have in addition to RDS). Quite odd really.

Thank you re your kind comments! :smile:

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North West used to have RDS back in the late 2000s-early 2010s, pretty sure it was a similar title to what it is now. From what I recall they had some serious transmitter issues at one time which significantly reduced their reach (perhaps needing to use a backup?) and the RDS was I believe gone for some time. Nice to see it back.

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RDS change noted for Wagga

And Gundagai Triple M relay of 1152AM on 100.7 now running comprehensive RDS with Triple M station name, DJ and song info. In stereo too. Didn’t get to Tumut to see if 107.9 is doing the same.

Some spurs still exist though, 107.1 is a strong Triple M spur with RDS and stereo sound that sounds almost as good as 100.7.

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That’s definitely NEW for 2022 :+1:

1019life RDS may have happened in c2021.
BTW has 107.1 2AAA reactivated its RDS or were you too far away to be sure,
if you tried along the highway?

107.9 is receivable along the highway, but flat tropo conditions wouldn’t help re possible detection of RDS, if implemented on 107.9, from the region, unless
receiving closer to Tumut I guess.

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I checked 2AAA 107.1 before I got to Gundagai, I didn’t see any RDS, so it looks like that is still off.

It was there last time I was in Wagga, so I wondered if it was a PI code issue, or if they had switched it off, as you said.

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93.3 FM Gosford update.

Station name and text are both 50Plus

Much better!

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I’ve also noticed a large improvement in their audio quality too. It’s consistent, tightly controlled, and clean.

Probably best sounding out of all community stations in the area.

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50+ use a Wheatstone FM55 processor & it’s pretty good, they have Wheatstone AoIP equipped studios (the same as CoastFM), but unless they’ve changed recently, their playout system isn’t anything particularly fancy (they use Station playlist) & I think most or all of their music library is still mp3’s?

@mrworldwide If you think 50+ is the best sounding community station on the Coast, I’d like to know exactly what is wrong with CoastFM’s sound, because we’ve spent literally over $100,000 on Wheatstone AoIP Digital studio equipment & RCS Zetta playout & a high quality broadcast .wav music library (it’s actually the music library from 1 of the big commercial networks) & the processing settings are fully written & configured by me, to try to make the station sound better than even the commercial stations can.

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Just sent you a PM!

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