I did drive through Goulburn over the weekend so it’s possible the radio picked up 2XX while I was on Bluetooth, but the radio was on 98.3 yesterday morning without RDS and reverted back to regular 98.3 on my way home from work this afternoon. Why it switched to 2XX this morning and only this morning, I have no idea.
Some Adelaide RDS notes
Community stations Fresh, Three D and Life 107.9 all have RDS.
Will post some screenshots when in my rental car tomorrow.
All commercials have RDS on their Hills repeaters.
Triple J and Classic FM only have RDS from Mt Lofty. Classic FM has followed the annoying Melbourne and Canberra habit of alternating station name text ie. ABC / Classic / FM… Much prefer the simpler Sydney ‘Classic’ static text, or even Brisbane’s louder CLASSIC text.
No RDS at all from SBS on 106.3 or 95.1.
None of the suburban community stations appear to have RDS.
Some RDS screenshots from Menglers Hill Lookout, near Nuriootpa in the Barossa Valley.
Apologies for the image quality, was hard to avoid reflections!
Magic FM 105.9 Spencer Gulf
Flow FM Mid North (Hawker)
Was down at Victor Harbour today.
Some RDS logs.
Flow FM 97.7 Coonalpyn
Flow FM 100 3 Bordertown
Hit 96.1 Mt Gambier - one I didn’t expect to get!
Some recently acquired Newcastle, NSW RDS PI codes:
Triple M 102.9 - 2029
2NUR 103.7 - 103B
2NEW 105.3 - A00A
Now @Radiohead should be able to post those RDS travel log pics as a result of my posting (re MediaSpy post restrictions)
An observation:
102.9 2ST Bowral & 102.9 Triple M Newcastle are sharing the same PI code of: 2029
Probably a non issue (most times) given the distance between the two stations.
Doing a Western/Southern NSW road trip.
First stop is Dubbo
The only stations locally with RDS
Binjang is a community station at Wellington on 91.5. Might be a TCBL.
…
And from my 2nd stop, Orange, 103.5 FM
Excellent.
I suspect Binjang (Wellington, NSW) became a full licenced station in January this year.
Callsign: 2BJG
Did you hear an on air ID?
Yes, I think it was just something like Binjang Community Radio, not 100% sure on that though.
Just checked the ACMA list, and yes, 2BJG is listed, licensed for 1 kw which seems about right based on where I received it.
Have noticed that, 102.9 is a preset in the work car, when in Sydney the preset button sometimes says 2ST other times just 102.9, then when I take it home to Newcastle, again it says 102.9 or Triple M after it’s been tuned in for a few minutes.
There’s a prime example of the CRA RDS “Standard” not working, they’re both commercial stations so should be using the CRA standard, but obviously they aren’t.
When your own member stations don’t use your standards, what’s the point in having them, other than to keep someone in a job in an irrelevant industry body/representitive?
Is there a possibility you can suggest to one of the chief engineers at either station to change their PI code?
I think this is the first time I’ve seen RDS on an off band station.
87.8 Canberra (up at Mt Ainslie Lookout - where it was a balmy 4 degrees at 10.30am today).
Also got RDS on
2EAR FM 107.5 Moruya
Power FM and 2EC Batemans Bay
This is the ‘logic’ of commercial radio in Australia today over far more facets of the business than RDS standards.
Going by the CRA standard, it’d have to be 2ST that changes, 2KKO comes before 2ST, but I don’t know anyone at 2ST, I’m not even sure who the Grants tech would be who looks after 2ST, they wouldn’t be local, but may come from Wave in Wollongong?
On the Central Coast over the weekend my car radio was flicking between Triple M Newcastle and 2ST on the preset button.
Shows how flawed the CRA advice is with stations in relatively close proximity.
Not sure of many others that do: I think @tx42 does on Pulse in Tassie, and the only other narrowcaster (albeit in-band) that comes to mind is the Triple M Country HPON in Toowoomba
Yeah, I’ve got RDS running on Pulse’s LPONs. It’s really not that hard, I’d love to see more narrowcasters hop on the bandwagon. I think a few KIX Country repeaters have had RDS in the past. I’m fairly sure Raw FM has RDS on their Canberra transmitter.
Vision Christian Radio and Faith FM, for example, could stick a $50 Raspberry Pi with a cheap 192khz DAC at their major sites, bring the audio from the satellite receiver on the soundcard input, use Stereo Tool to give it a bit of processing and RDS, and send it off as composite to the transmitter. They can send data streams in their satellite channel that come out through the receiver RS-232 port, so could use that to send artist and title details… Under $100, and would make the rest of the signal sound a whole lot better (and possibly give them some more perceived coverage by making the signal louder, therefore cutting over the noise floor more).
Had RDS on my 88.0 in Biloela QLD
Visited Broken Hill recently. Nice to see that the community station in town 2DRY FM looked to be the only station with RDS.
Video of changing radiotext can be seen here; using my stock car radio in 2018 Suzuki Vitara.
I have also updated the google sheet.