• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Emergency Alerts Via Local Stations

B

Barry

An acquaintance recently bought a portable HD radio. One of its features is that it can show text alerts on its display from certain local stations broadcasting in HD, for such events as extreme weather conditions.
Does anyone know whether this actually works in this area? It’s probably one thing for a station to have the equipment to transmit the alerts, and quite another to actually provide them. As this duplicates what is available on most cell phones, it seems possible that few if any radio stations in this region actually bother with this.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
I've had HD radios around for years and have never seen this feature used.
Click to expand...
Nor have I. Does anyone have any experience with actual use of this feature?

This is somewhat like the RDS system developed in Germany; it has the ability to search and change to the best of a national network's many signals. Since few US stations have such fulltime 100% simultaneous regional or national networks, it's not implemented in the US but both my Porsche and Beemer will do it.

Few people in radio even know it exists. For the few radios that have the feature, we did activate it in LA for KRCD and KRCV, two Class A signals with lots of coverage issues.

Radio Data System - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
I don’t think EAS encoders directly encode something on the HD. When I install an EAS box, I put it after the board and before the STL and streaming encoder, and it only handles the audio.
Perhaps the radio itself decodes the “duck fart” and shows you the text.
 
This feature was not in the earlier HD Radio Receivers. I think iBiquity bolted it on at some point in the early 2010s, possibly in accordance with the CAP alerting transition.
Here is the earliest family of receivers I can find that had this function, from 2015. New Pioneer HD Radio™ Receivers Include Emergency Alerts Feature - DTS

Xperi claimed in 2019 that 46 of the top 50 markets had at least one station using this tech. They also claimed it was a simple software update to existing HD encoders, so I would expect most stations using HD Radio can do this.
 
The feature has to be enabled on the EAS encoding equipment. The EAS box has to be able to talk to the HD importer via IP. I only have experience with the Sage ENDEC, but programming it is fairly simple, using the ENDECset software. It helps if both the EAS and HD boxes have static IP addresses.
 
RDS has an "alarm" function. It's done by changing the programme type (PTY) from whatever it normally is (Pop Music, News, etc) to 31 (Alarm). This then re-tunes any radio that receives it to the station broadcasting the alarm and on many radios will sound an audible alarm, flash the display, etc. I'm lucky to live in a place that has relatively few emergencies so I've never seen it in use, other than by the occasional mischievous pirate abusing it over 20 years ago.

In Europe, the traffic flag is regularly used. If you are listening to a national network or a CD/aux input, and you have the feature switched on in your car radio, and a local station broadcasts a traffic report, your radio will switch to the traffic report and switch back to your previous listening once it's finished. It doesn't work in the US because it relies on the national network existing, and the local stations being part of the same organization as the national network (in our case, the BBC).
 
Last edited:
My car does this. I can toggle the feature on/off. Most of the time I’ll see it happen when I get in the car if a required weekly/monthly test was recently triggered. The radio will give a short beep and an icon appears on the screen indicating that a message is present. If I click on the icon, it will show me the text of the message followed by the call letters of the station that transmitted the message. I’ve seen many messages from several of the NYC FMs as well as WFAS (all digital AM). I’ve gotten a couple of flash flood warnings over the last couple of years as well.
 
luperm said:
My car does this. I can toggle the feature on/off. Most of the time I’ll see it happen when I get in the car if a required weekly/monthly test was recently triggered. The radio will give a short beep and an icon appears on the screen indicating that a message is present. If I click on the icon, it will show me the text of the message followed by the call letters of the station that transmitted the message. I’ve seen many messages from several of the NYC FMs as well as WFAS (all digital AM). I’ve gotten a couple of flash flood warnings over the last couple of years as well.
Click to expand...
What kind of car is it?
 
DrJerry said:
It's incredible that you know the person who bought a portable HD radio.
Click to expand...
I am another person who bought portable HD radios! I actually have 3 portable HD radios, the black HDR-14 and its counterpart white SG-108 made by Sangean, 2 otherwise identical "pocket sized" HD radios that have the Emergency Alert "EA" function. (The 3rd one is an HDR-16, no EA, that I use as a kitchen radio on top of the fridge. It's almost always tuned to 88.1 KNTU HD-2 Jazz) I searched for a list of stations that use Emergency Alert. Couldn't fine that. The search did lead me here though and to this thread. Yesterday during some stormy weather I searched all of the HD stations in DFW, almost every FM has HD here, and only one, KCBI 90.9, indicated it was using EA with a lower case "a" on the LCD display. No alerts ever happened though. Later the "a" indicator disappeared. So the EA is not being used much if at all. Seems like a good idea though. If the radio is connected to the AC adaptor and in standby it's supposed to wake up with an alarm and scroll the emergency data on the LCD screen. It's too bad EA isn't being used.
 
im on a Wyoming station, not in HD.. but uses RDS extensively... and when a weather alert/warning/watch/test is triggered, it scrolls on the radio what it is... test.. watch... warning and what kind of watch or warning it is
 
In Europe, RBDS is required to automatically tune receivers to a particular station and turn on a radio in an emergency. Most U.S. RDS generators can be set up to do the same but it's not currently allowed in the States.
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
im on a Wyoming station, not in HD.. but uses RDS extensively... and when a weather alert/warning/watch/test is triggered, it scrolls on the radio what it is... test.. watch... warning and what kind of watch or warning it is
Click to expand...

So it's not an "HD radio" thing only? Reading up on it I thought it was a seldom used feature of HD radio
 
The website HD Radio Directory indicates which stations (supposedly) support emergency alerts.
In New York, this includes WINS FM, WQHT, WCBS FM, and WBLS. Also WFAS AM.
According to the website, the IHeart HD stations in New York support traffic and weather information.
 
Last edited:
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom