Radio Data System (RDS)

Some RDS notes from today

95.3 Flow FM Speed - static text on both lines, so no song or other info

COVID safe reminders from Mixx 107.7, no song info

Looks like Triple M Bendigo have changed their station name text again… was MMM BGO last I heard

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Yep, was changed to “Triple M” alongside Shep & Albury sometime last year. Interesting they’ve changed it again.

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Why even bother having RDS when it’s practically unreadable?

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There is a FM station over here in Tauranga New Zealand thy does a similar thing and it is annoying and hard to follow

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I know CFM Whitianga was doing it late last year. Drove me nuts, especially since it was just their RT line.

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Do any radio stations use the traffic announcements in RDS?

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Don’t know about TA traffic announcements, but TMC traffic message channel is definitely used in metro areas to deliver traffic info to sat nav units.

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Hi @Petarkco,

At the top of this RDS forum you will find ‘The Australian RDS List’ Google Sheet that might assist you.
I can see Wave FM, Wollongong & 3MMM Melb have TP, but I can’t see TA listed for any stations in the list & not aware of any stations either. Others might be able to help you?
Software like RDS Spy with a SDR can show plenty of this RDS info.

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2AAA community radio in Wagga now has RDS. Haven’t seen any song info on it though.

Hit 93.1 RDS screenshot, now has Song info

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Did they extend RDS to their relays in Wagga south 107.9, Junee & Coolamon?

2AAA did have song info RT some time back.

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Yes, I should have added.
Only relay I could get RDS on was 97.9 at Junee, not 107.9 Wagga South.
Didn’t appear to be on 99.1 Coolamon, but I may not have had a strong enough signal.
Will find out about Gundagai tomorrow when I head for Sydney.

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the RDS on 2AAA must be new. It didn’t have it back in summer when dxnerd & myself was up at Cabramurra

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@Petarkco In case you’re still interested

I have found one & only one station so far that does have the TA Traffic Announcements flag set. 100.9 2BACR Bankstown has the TA & TP flags set in theirRDS. No doubt it’s a setting oversight though :slight_smile:

2BACR often has the RDS switched off, but not tonight.

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If I’m not mistaken, and Wikipedia is to be believed, TA should only be sent when an actual traffic report is being broadcast, and receivers can be set to change station to the station with that flag set, so as listeners can theoretically receive the latest traffic info.

Could be a lot of people around Bankstown forcibly listening to 2BACR :smiley:

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LOL. Could be, but not now. Within 20 mins of me posting my earlier message they switched off the RDS on 2BACR. Maybe the fact that their RDS is off usually is due to the problems it causes to users car radio due to the incorrect TA flag setting & the station just isn’t aware of the TA flag or know how it works or program their RDS correctly. Who knows…?

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Thanks @ozbark

That’s what I was going to ask next. TP I think should be sent to say that you do traffic and then send TA when you do.

My Prius manual also mentions that if an emergency broadcast is received that it will override. Is there anything in RDS for this? Would it mainly be used in motorway tunnels?

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In tunnels, the tunnel authority overrides the audio of all radio stations. Nothing special is required of the car radio.

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That’s how I read it too. I’ve often referred to this document (and others) to build on my RDS knowledge base.

You’ll find some info there on the TP & TA flags.

I’ve never seen the usage of TA on a car radio, but on searching Youtube I found this video, which does demonstrate TA flag usage.

Some other MaxEye Technologies RDS videos there too.
Hope that helps a bit.

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There’s a PTY code for emergency stations in both the European and American (RBDS) standards

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Looks like 2NUR have done away with the Dynamic station name text and put the song info in the 2nd line only (yay!). Ststion name text stayed as below for the 15 minutes that I listened this morning

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