I know that there have been other threads on this subject, but I'm not sure if this is covered.

I'm running V2.00 final and Hijack 331

I have set up presets for, amongst others, the 4 main UK BBC radio stations (1,2,3 & 4). I set this up in Coventry and all was well, they all picked up RDS and the AF diagnostic screen worked fine.

I then travelled down to Devon over the holidays, with the player on but not in tuner mode. Once there, I thought I'd try out the tuners AF skills, but none of the BBC stations could be picked up. They were all trying to access the Coventry frequencies, and could obviously not pick up a signal on them. The AF debugging screen said no AF information.

Does the software not store the AF frequencies for preset stations? Surely you don't have to keep in tuner mode to keep track of the new best AF frequency as you travel?

There are apparently large bugs with RDS, et al., in 2.0 final. Do a BBS search for RDS and I'm sure you'll find the appropriate thread(s).

IIRC, these two are the most relevant.

No, AF stations are not stored with the presets. I'd have to say that didn't occur - have you seen other head units that do this? I guess it makes sense!

Rob

Actually, thinking about it further.. are you sure the station broadcasts its entire nationwide AF list? I thought each transmitter broadcasts an AF list for the transmitters bordering it, so if you scanned for Coventry bordering stations in Devon you would be out of luck.

I could be wrong..

Rob

I think my old Alpine HU used to store station name and PTY info instead of Frequency, so It could look for the station name or the same program type if it couldn't find the station you wanted.

All I know is that my old Blaupunkt Heidelburg used to pick up BBC Radio in the same 2 areas without any user intervention, having been tuned in initially in Coventry in the same way. I presume from this that the AF list covers the whole country. I thought that this was the whole point of AF.

I think it could take a long time after power-on for the empeg to scan the entire FM band looking for a matching PTY if it can't find the previous station.I suppose that dual-channel tuners could do something more creative here but that's a moot point.

The behaviour I would expect is that the last freq. (possibly one that's aquired by the AF mechanism) is the one the tuner returns to at power-on. If the user presses L/R to change preset then the 'soft' value is lost forever. Maybe it already does something like this?

I don't know exactly if/how this can help here , but I noticed how some stations broadcast alternate frequencies (belonging to that station in other areas in the country) in some specific areas and they don't in others.

To be more clear (I hope), I usually listen to "Radio24" wich broadcasts all over Italy and that has a number of different frequencies throughout the country, and they all are listed as alternate frequencies when I am in Rome. When I move to L'Aquila, a small town not far from Rome, I get "No AF information Available".
(In L'Aquila Radio24 occupies a different frequency than in Rome, just for the record).

I have set up presets for, amongst others, the 4 main UK BBC radio stations (1,2,3 & 4)

As far as I can figure it, there is a problem with the presets, I can only get "NO AF information" on any preset, but if I put the tuner on bank B, and tune in, say Radio 2, manually with the AF on, it'll retune faultlessly and the debugger will work fine. Even if you had player on, I would be pretty sure that it re-tuned and would be playing the best frequency when you got to Devon, this way.

I have not been able to replicate the fault of re-tuning to other stations, but I haven't been much out of the immediate area.

I think that there is also a problem with traffic announcements on AF. You will find an extensive thread on this under general.

I'm no expert, but I think Rob is right, that the AF only stores adjacent frequencies. The confusion may arise, because, at the inception of the RDS system, Blaupunkt were offering an alternative where an upgradeable memory card stored all the national frequencies and compared them audibly, re-tuning to the strongest.

In reply to:

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I think my old Alpine HU used to store station name and PTY info instead of Frequency, so It could look for the station name or the same program type if it couldn't find the station you wanted.

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It actually stores a PI code that is unique to each station. That's what the headunit uses when it scans the AF lists to check wether it really is the same station and not a different one that happens to be on the same frequency in another location. The only time I've had my old headunit track a single station is when I'm either listening to it with AF on, or tuned to it and playing an MD instead. The radio didn't store the new frequency so when I pressed the preset button it would tune back to the old one.

I would say the behaviour of the empeg is correct in that respect...