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Old 15-11-2004, 12:56
Dave 8o]
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Hi

I'm having a problem with my Car Radio/CD player, I'm not sure of the model, but I now its a Clarion, my car is a Peugot 307.

Basically, I have tuned the preset buttons, into the stations I like, the first one being Radio Aire. Yet almost every morning I switch the radio on and the preset button is tuned to a different station, usually Radio 1 or 2.

When my car is parked on the drive, the signal from Radio Aire is very bad, so I am wondering if this is causing the radio to re-tune. If so, does anyone know how to stop this, as it's getting on my nerves.


Any help would be appreciated.
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Old 15-11-2004, 14:28
chrisjr
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Is the preset actually tuned to a different station or is it the radio? ie if you press the button does it try to go back to Radio Aire?

What you are experiencing, if it's the latter, may well be an effect of the RDS system. What is likely to be happening is that because you have a bad signal from Radio Aire the radio is trying to find an alternative station to tune to.

Usually this would involve looking up the RDS AF (Alternative Frequency) list which should list all the frequencies used by the station in question. In the case of a Beeb local it is just conceivable they would also list Radio 2 or Radio 4 as an alternative.

So that might explain what's going on. The only way to stop it is to dive into the menuing system of the radio and turn off this feature. Quite how you do that and what it calls it will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer so maybe time to dust off the manual? Look for any reference to AF as a starter.
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Old 15-11-2004, 15:19
Dave 8o]
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Thanks for the reply.

The radio actually changes the preset, so I have to manually re-tune the station, once done, its fine until I switch off the engine and park the car. When I return, the preset has usually changed.

I suspect you may be right with the RDS AF , but I know for a fact that Radio Aire only has one frequency, so I don't know why it is locking onto one of the BBC stations.

I've tried all the menu's, so I'll try the manual, if that fails, I'll get the dealer to look at it, when it goes for it's next service.
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Old 15-11-2004, 15:35
chrisjr
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Does seem a bit odd that the radio would zoom off and find Radio 2 from Radio Aire, very unlikely to be getting that from an AF list

One thing that I have experienced from some radios is skipping to another commercial station when you travel out of the area of the station you were listening to.

The radio should scan for another station first using the AF list then look for another station using the RDS code for the station and trying to find a match. The RDS code is a four character code embedded in the data stream and should be unique to every station, though not necessarily every transmitter. But the RDS spec also allows for the concept of Regional Groups. It basically says that the last pair of characters in the RDS code can be used to define a group of similar stations. For instance a load of overlapping BBC locals might use this to define themselves as a "group". The radio will, after exhausting the AF list, then search for a station in this "group". However way back in the mists of time the IBA (as was) decided to give all the commercial stations of the time the same last two RDS characters. Thus a lot of radios believe that they can tune randomly to any commercial frequency simply because they have the same last two RDS code characters, regardless of any real relationship between the two stations!

There is another possibility which is that the radio just goes off on a random search and just happens to lock onto Radio 2 because they happen to be at the beginning of the FM band. Or Radio 1 because that might be the next higher frequency with a strong enough signal to stop it autoscanning?

In any case it shouldn't reprogram the preset. So unless the radio has some kind of auto preset programming mode that has been left on I reckon it's got a fault somewhere.
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