issues with rte radio 1 reception in car

73trix

In the past few days I can't seem to tune in radio 1 in my car. Other stations, including RTE are fine but it's strange about radio 1. It seems fine on the radio at home.

Antenna

73trix wrote: »

In the past few days I can't seem to tune in radio 1 in my car. Other stations, including RTE are fine but it's strange about radio 1. It seems fine on the radio at home.

Do you have AF (automatic retuning) enabled ? (depending on the radio the letters AF would be displayed at the top/side of the radio display if it is enabled). Enable it if not and try the preset again?

On some car radios enabling button 'RDS' is the same thing.
Have you tried scan or manual tuning (88-90MHz FM area) or just trying the existing preset?

johnnyvee

Hi ya. I may have the solution for ya. RTE radio 1 is one of the very few stations that doesn't transmit a TP flag. This signal is a notification to the RDS receiver that the radio station transmits Traffic Announcements. If the TA button on your car radion is turned on (have a look at your display) some car radios wouldn't pickup RTE radio 1 in the carpark of RTE in Donnybrook, others are more forgiving (a beep to indicate no TP flag) others simply indicated the information on their display. Have a look for a TA or TP indication on your radio ........... Johnny

Antenna

johnnyvee wrote: »

Hi ya. I may have the solution for ya. RTE radio 1 is one of the very few stations that doesn't transmit a TP flag. This signal is a notification to the RDS receiver that the radio station transmits Traffic Announcements. If the TA button on your car radion is turned on (have a look at your display) some car radios wouldn't pickup RTE radio 1 in the carpark of RTE in Donnybrook, others are more forgiving (a beep to indicate no TP flag) others simply indicated the information on their display. Have a look for a TA or TP indication on your radio ........... Johnny

Toyota car radio pictured (made by Panasonic) jumps onto another station 20 seconds after a preset of a non-TP station is selected when in TP mode, "TP SEEK" appears on the display when this jump happens. It would be far more user friendly if as you say a single warning beep was issued, but the radio stayed put on the selected station. 'Ordinary people' (they might have accidentally enabled TP) are not going to understand, and be bewildered (and be distracted!), why the Toyota radio jumps to another station after 20 seconds of pressing a preset of a non-TP station, or a TP station with a weak reception
On this radio, pressing the TA button enables or disables it, on other car radios, the button might be TP/Traffic/TI (inconsistency is more confusion)

I have tried a couple of car radios and they however do treat RTE R1 as a traffic announcements (TP) station.

73trix

AF did the trick! Thnx.

johnnyvee

Hi ya. AF stands for alternative frequency, so if you set the frequency of radio 1 in Dublin and drive to say Limerick, the tuner will change frequencies for that station and you will won't have to retune. This happens for all stations that broadcast on more than one frequency. Turning off AF just turns off the RDS function. You will now have to manually retune the alternative frequencies for all stations. You might have another look at your display...

As stated earlier the TA/TP button will act as a filter and only allow stations with a TP flag set to be listened to. I am not aware of any stations in the republic that broadcasting Traffic Announcements ( I may be wrong ! ) yet most, if not all of the stations transmit a TP flag. The only station that does appear to be following those rules is RTE radio 1, to their cost. No station wants to be removed from this filtering process hence the reason the other stations incorrectly broadcast this TP flag - Johnny