Radio Data System (RDS)

Oops, must have mistyped. It was actually ore94.7. And yes, this was seen on 94.7.

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A small enhancement to the PI Code Worksheet of our Aus/NZ RDS List (Google Sheets) for users.

Have added ā€˜Quick Navigation Hyperlinks’ to numerous PI codes (or more specifically to cells) evenly distributed throughout the length of almost 1000 PI codes/transmitter entries in the worksheet.
The purpose of this change is to avoid the time consuming scrolling action when searching for PI codes within the Worksheet for viewing or editing.
Some small GUI colour formatting changes of WkSheet 11 too (later than posted below).

A reminder in our Worksheet above, we have a column titled ā€˜PI CHECK’ that lists the date the PI code was last confirmed for a specific transmitter (frequency & site).
Within the sheet there’s several entries that don’t have a date for the last time a PI code was last checked or confirmed & some entries that haven’t been checked or confirmed for some years. If anyone has both time & ability to confirm any missing or old PI Check dates please consider updating these entry dates based on your actual confirmed listening/dxing or RDS Encoder access. Some PI codes have a habit of changing. See below.

For any PI code changes please let us all know via this RDS thread.

For anyone without Google Sheets editing experience please note all observations here in this forum & I’ll add to the list as time permits.

While watching this video (that shows a lot of what data US stations send out), I remembered that some stations here are/were meant to send traffic data for certain cars’s navigation systems/GPS units. Do they still do, or has it been phased out (and nobody noticed)?

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Yes still alive & well across the cites & some major regional centres here.

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In Australia the prominent provider is Intelematics. Still going in all Aus cap cities and some regional centres as far as I’m aware. As more cars have always-on data connections, this sort of RDS traffic data will likely decline in usage.

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C91.3 Macathur (Sydney, NSW) is doing some weird stuff on their RDS.

It’s displaying & transmitting the dreaded ASCII NUL character in the Radio Text display in the Basic RDS Decoder of RDS Spy. This looks to be slowing down their RDS decoding, but is decoding correctly in the Radio Text Logger. (See below)

I wonder if anyone is having any RT text display issues in their vehicles? :thinking:

The other thing that’s new to C91.3 is the cancer that is the usage of RDS RT for advertising.
The SE Qld RDS RT advertising usage contagion has spread to Sydney. :slightly_frowning_face:

UPDATE: The above NUL character generation appears to be originating from the VK2SWL webserver as I noted it also on 100.9 Connect FM from the same webserver, but is okay from my SDR. :thinking:

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The site details listed on that web server for C91.3 are wrong, it’s on Mt Hercules Rd, but I’m pretty sure it’s either known as Mt Razorback or Razorback Range, as it’s the same site as the TXA DTV translator site. Also it’s not Vertical, they have a backup Vertical antenna on the old, smaller tower, but its main antenna was changed to a mixed antenna on the taller tower many years ago.
Oh & I don’t think it’s 1kW either, I think it’s higher than that.

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It was 1 kW vertical back when WIN3 was operational from the Nose as the elderstatesfolks on here would recall. However it’s not that easy to receive in tropo from down here, requiring a good level of enhancement to make an impression. Alive 90.5 outperforms it for example, so may only be running 1 kW.

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ACMA has it licensed for 1kW at Razorback Range.
https://web.acma.gov.au/rrl/licence_image.extract_pdf?pLICENCE_NO=1170515/1

Yes noted that too. An ā€˜FM List’ input error by someone.
Can someone here with user/editing access to FM List please login & correct this error.

I’ve taken another look at the ACMA R&TV Handbook & RRF & they still list as 1kW, Vertical.
Perhaps the WIN tech or station haven’t advised ACMA.
I note the licence expires on Jul 31st, 2025. Perhaps the ACMA records will be updated then with the correct polarisation/power info?
:man_shrugging:
Thanks for the headsup @anon71206228 :+1:

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Which surprises me because the 200 watt 2MCR 100.3 community station is received almost as well as 91.3 where I am… unless they are over spec as well! (and as they are at Razorback too).

WS 88.3 is weaker than both of those.

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Same here I get a much better signal for 2MCR than I do for C91.3, maybe it a slight height advantage of the 2MCR site and less blocked by the Acacia Gardens ridge??

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I’ll pull the correct details together for this one and submit an update request on FMList, just to confirm - the record in the ACMA spreadsheet is the correct stuff to send over?

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Yes it is

2MCR is also more readily received in Bungendore than C91.3.

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:thinking:

@RF Burns said the antenna was now a Mixed Polarisation array.
The ACMA records show Vertical polarisation @ 60m.
I do see a 4 bay Mixed polarisation colinear array on Google Street View at ~60m, verifying what @anon71206228 said so the polarisation should be updated to Mixed.
The ā€˜simple’ TX site name as @RF Burns suggested could either be Razorback Range or Mt.Razorback.
The power is probably approximately correct at 1kW per ACMA records, but I don’t honestly know. The reality of such things are known by the onsite engineers like RF Burns.

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ACMA will fully know what the true details are, they would’ve approved the antenna change, the WIN techs wouldn’t have had to notify ACMA, they would’ve told them what they want, but couldn’t have made any changes until ACMA approved.

I can’t find my site photos right now so have taken this from Google Maps Street View, the original Vertical antennas are circled in Yellow (now backup), the current (main) antennas are circled in Red, with the DTV UHF antennas just above.

The C91.3 Mixed antennas were installed somewhere around the same time as the DTV translator site was built, which is about 10 years ago now, so they’re not exactly new, I think the new taller tower was built for the mixed antenna array & then the DTV used that, not the other way around, but the taller tower was built prior to the DTV site, I’m just not sure if it was specifically built for C91.3 or the DTV antennas.

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88.9 2RSR ā€˜Radio Skid Row’ now using Long PS.
Displaying on RDS Spy & the TEF radios as:- RADIO SKID ROW
I think this change might have occurred Friday morning Dec 27th, 2024.

No RT, but it was there much earlier today.
Just RDS Groups 0A & 15A.

I wonder if any ā€˜new’ vehicle tuners can display the long PS of: RADIO SKID ROW?
Feedback would be great. :slight_smile:
I believe 2RSR might well be the first confirmed Australian community broadcaster to experiment with Long PS. The first Australian broadcaster being Rebel FM/The Breeze.

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Media Spy users are encouraged to participate in the following survey. One does not need to be a tech-head to participate. The participant just needs to be located in one of the below listed radio station localities or travelling through/visiting & either own a RDS radio or be traveling in a vehicle with RDS tuned to one of the below listed radio stations.

All we require is:

  1. An indication of whether you can see (or not) the RDS PS / Radio Station Name as transmitted by the radio station as part of the FM RDS transmission of one of the stations listed below using a known vehicle tuner or radio receiver.
  2. The manufacturer name of vehicle with RDS tuner or radio receiver model. You can supply if you wish, the model specs.
  3. Year of manufacture of vehicle with the RDS tuner or RDS receiver.

Please report your findings in this forum either publicly or privately to me if you don’t wish your user name associated publicly with later posted results in this thread.
I’ll publish here progressively each week over the summer depending on time & the amount of contributions, the results.

The purpose of this survey is to determine the make & model of vehicle radio tuners based on year of manufacture that have a problem displaying the RDS station name/message text (PS & RT) data based on the transmitted PI code. It is known by several of us here in this forum that the PI codes of 0000 & FFFF (and to a lesser extent 0XXX, where X is any Hex digit), cause a ā€˜non display of RDS station name & text’ problem with some radios/tuners.
It is suspected that some of the newer vehicles may have a lesser problem with displaying the PS with these PI codes, but given the huge number of new vehicle manufacturer brands (& tuners?) & radio receivers we simply don’t know how big the problem is in current times.
NB the RDS PI code is invisible to radio tuner users.

What we do know is that RDS stations transmitting with RDS PI codes 0000 & FFFF should not be! This is based on known problems & the International RDS standards.
As one can see from the list below most of the problems are known to be associated with community radio stations. Perhaps this is an indication of lack of training, reading & education of RDS by the technical RDS Encoder programmers for the below mentioned radio stations.

I think the results of this survey should be of interest to many.
With many people travelling on holidays & having visitors to their homes I thought now might be a good time to post the survey.

Look forward to reading peoples feedback & viewing our accumulated results over the holiday period.

Here’s the station list where we know there’s known problems based on last known station RDS data.

PI / State / Locality / Freq / Station Name / PS-RDS Station Name
0000 NSW Cooma 93.9 Monaro FM / {Unknown, possibly blank}
0000 NSW Ravensworth Mine 94.9 ABC Upper Hunter / ABC 1057
0000 NSW Orange 107.5 FM107.5 / {Blank PS}
0000 NSW Sydney 94.5 FBi / FBiRadio
0005 SA Mount Gambier 100.1 5GTR / 5GTR / FM100.1 {Dynamic PS}
000F SA Port Augusta 105.1 Trax FM / TRAX FM
0014 NT Darwin 104.1 Territory FM / 104ONE
0777 ACT Canberra 91.9 1Way FM / 1WAY FM
0777 ACT Canberra 94.3 1Way FM / 1WAY FM
0787 ACT Canberra 90.3 ArtSound FM / ArtSound FM {Dynamic PS}
0787 ACT Canberra 92.7 ArtSound FM / ArtSound FM {Dynamic PS}
07BF ACT Canberra 98.3 2XX FM / 2XX FM
081B NSW Batemans Bay 107.5 2EAR FM / 2EAR FM
0923 NSW Young 92.3 2YYY / 2YYY
0D00 NSW Cooma 90.5 Monaro FM / MonaroFM
0F4F VIC Latrobe Valley 91.9 SEN Track / SEN etc {Dynamic PS}
FFFF NSW Captains Flat 88.5 ABC Canberra / ABC_CBR
FFFF NSW Hay 92.1 Hay FM / 2HayFM
FFFF NSW Dorrigo 93.3 2BBB / Triple B etc {Dynamic PS}
FFFF NSW Bellingen 107.3 2BBB / Triple B etc {Dynamic PS}
FFFF NSW Braidwood 100.3 2CN / ABC 666
FFFF NSW Wagga Wagga 107.1 Triple A / Triple A
FFFF VIC Ballarat 103.1 3BA FM / 3BA
FFFF QLD Rockhampton 100.7 4US / 4US etc. {Dynamic PS}
FFFF WA Perth 100.9 Noongar Radio / Noongar
FFFF TAS George Town 95.3 Tamar FM / Tamar FM
FFFF TAS Port Arthur 97.7 Tasman FM / TASMANFM

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Can not confirm if the PI Code is still FFFF
But was in Rockhampton yesterday and this station was showing fine complete with rotating PS (4US FEELING DEADLY) on my 2024 BYD Seal Premium

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