Good to know! My car radio didn’t detect any 3ZZZ RDS when i was there a few weeks ago.
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Thanks for revealing the RDS Spy pics 
That would be great for the local listeners if you manage to contact those individuals/stations. 
I also noted from ACMA website that 3ZZZ & has the same listed antenna heights for main & standby antenna as 3PBS.
Anyway back to 3ZZZ & 3ECB PI codes. I had a look at our RDS Engineering Sheet for PI code selections.
For 3ZZZ; PI code of choice would be: 302F (but 302A to 302F is free), 3023 is used by 3BA (& must be avoided).
For 3ECB; PI code 3081 is free.
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Just further to my last post about the Melbourne stations, since other questions have been asked.
I’m not totally across this as much as some other stuff at MT D, but I think 3RRR are on the standby FM antenna at Ornata Rd, while works on the main antenna are done (which is temporarily suspended at the moment) so signal strengths being down for them will be related to this.
Also 3PBS & 3MBS are moving out of BAI Eyre Rd to TXA Ornata Rd, this should’ve been completed months ago, but various things held it up, it’s currently happening now & over the next few weeks, both of them may be using the standby transmitters on the standby antenna at BAI Eyre Rd, while the others are moved/installed at Ornata Rd, so those being down in power will be related to that.
I believe the community radio group that were at BAI Eyre Rd have broken up & 2 have left BAI for TXA sites, the only one who’s staying at BAI Eyre Rd AFAIK is 3ZZZ.
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So that leaves 3SYN as the only metro Melbourne station without RDS?
90.7 is still the only frequency I’ve never witnessed RDS on first hand.
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Pricey Is currently doing a farewell tour,broadcasting from a different location up here every Friday,this morning he was on Magnetic Island,.
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Station X sure won’t, @MrX @Party_Pete, will it?
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94.1 are also in Bundall, up near the council chambers, racecourse side by the looks of a quick search here.
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Thanks for the info, but any specific reason why 3923 shouldn’t be a consideration?
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Definitely a reason in this case.
Several broadcast techs & engineers have discovered that in some RDS tuners the tuner only appears to look at the last two digits of a PI code when deciding if to do a frequency change. If you take a look through the RDS tread archive of Media Spy you’ll find some examples of unintended RDS tuner switching between Eg 1 94.5 FBi & Star 104.5 and Eg 2 Nova 96.9 Syd & Hit 106.9 Newcastle re @anon71206228 experiences in some intermediate locations, where last two digits of PI code are identical.
With PI of 3923 you could still likely encounter an unintended frequency switch to 102.3 3BA (PI 3023) somewhere between Melbourne & Ballarat.
The authors of CRA PI doc below don’t appear to be aware of this problem.
ref page 5 to 7
Also re this
| The PI code consists of four characters. The first two characters have special meaning, second two are used to clearly identify different stations. | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The first character identifies country. The second character identifies program type in terms of area coverage: |
|0 - Local (Local program transmitted via a single transmitter only during the whole transmitting time.)||||||||
|1 - International (The same program is also transmitted in other countries.)||||||||
|2 - National (The same program is transmitted throughout the country.)||||||||
|3 - Supra-regional (The same program is transmitted throughout a large part of the country.)||||||||
|4 to F - Regional (The program is available only in one location or region over one or more frequencies, and there exists no definition of its frontiers.)||||||||
Re all the above I’d also consider re callsign & availability, a PI of 392F as also a viable alternative, just that 302F of ‘local’ verses ‘region’ definition fitted better re 2nd hex character, but if you consider what the CRA was trying to achieve then 392F (end of call sign range ZZZ) might be an option & its also thought to be free.
Hope that’s not too confusing, a bit of info to absorb & it’s based on experience of @anon71206228 & consideration of a few factors.
ref: TAB 14 of our Australian/NZ RDS List; The Tables on that Engineering tab are useful.
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You’re right, it is a bit to absorb and digest so I’ll have to go through it slowly, but I see your reasoning now. Unfortunately for RDS, it seems many of the settings aren’t really honoured or enforced, and RDS in general a very low priority for techs. Which is understandable, they probably have 1001 more important things to maintain, and no one will lose any sleep over a broken or misconfigured RDS. For example, Nova’s RDS has currently been stuck for days at “Melbourne weather: currently 12.5”
On the subject of pdf’s, I recently came across one while searching for something, and discovered that the Music/Speech switch is to allow capable receivers to have two different volume settings of the listener’s preference, one for music, and one for speech. That’s my interpretation of it anyway.
It seems RDS has a few tidbits like that that will probably never fully be realised or appreciated.
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Glad there’s some improvement…. That site has always been a bit clunky to use to me.
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As found on the sleeve insert of a circa 2001 Ministry of Sound CD compilation. I really can’t recall much about Rhythm FM in Sydney was it an aspirant station and was it broadcasting around the same time as Wild FM?
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I’d never heard of Rhythm FM before but given the 87.6 frequency it could have just been a narrowcast licence outside of the community broadcasters testing at the time.
Kiss FM in Melbourne was an unsuccessful aspirant for a community licence that was testing on 89.9 (IIRC) at the time, but it has since continued as a narrowcast station on 87.x around Melbourne.
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That’s a cool old Fresh92.7 logo too.
I’m surprised i1197 Brisbane wasn’t airing it too - as I think at that time it was purely a dance format too.
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Your recollection is right. If you look closely at the logo you can see it reads “Kiss 90 FM”, as it was “cool” (or just easier to say) to round up the frequency from 89.9. The frequencies used by the aspirants back then were 89.9, 90.7, 91.5, and 94.9, with some of them not always test-broadcasting on the same frequency each broadcast.
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Sydney i think only had 94.5 (FBi) and 96.9 (Free FM and also Wild FM) that were used by the aspirants. Can’t recall if there were any others?
Back then, 95.3 was used by KISS FM Lithgow (now 107.9 Move FM) and also Radio 50+ at Gosford (now 93.3 FM) as an aspirant.
In Brisbane, I think 96.5 and 97.3 were the aspirants frequencies. Family (now 96five) were using 96.5 and I think the group that is now on 1197AM were using 97.3 (can’t remember what their on air ID was, might have been KISS FM ???). I think Family started out on 92.1.
Bizarrely, Gold Coast also used 96.5 (by Hott FM, now Radio Metro). This was a mess on the M1 with Family and Hott cutting each other out. Hott eventually moved to 94.9 solving that issue.
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I think Rhythm also broadcasted on the Gold Coast on 87.6 at the time and in 2003 just after Hot Tomato launched.
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In Brisbane 97.3 was used by Switch, Pulse and Wild FM before it was auctioned in 2001.
Bizarrely the ABA decided to give 4BI the 98.1 FM license and switch the 1197AM license. It should have been the other way around as dance on AM doesn’t work.
Hott FM Gold Coast then moved to 105.7 in Dec 2000 prior to being confirmed in 2001 that they and Juice were the successful community aspirants. Hott then changed to 1057 Radio Metro to prevent confusion with the commercial licensee which it was presumed to be DMG and Hot FM but it was eventually Hot Tomato who bought it.
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