UK: Century FM in the Preston/Blackpool area

[DaveMatthews]

Hi folks,

I regularly commute from Lancaster to Blackpool, via the M6 and M55, using Navigon MN4. For the M6 leg of the journey I readily pick up TMC messages (still just using the bit of wire supplied with the Navigon GPS/TMC mouse!) from Classic FM. However as soon as I get within three miles of Preston, the receiver re-tunes to Century FM. Although the TMC icon in the software shows green, it shows no messages, and remains that way right through to Blackpool.

So the question is does Century transmit a TMC sub-carrier but no actual TMC messages or would I find that if I hook up the receiver to my car's radio aerial, I would start picking up messages from Century?

Many thanks in advance!

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Cheers,


Dave Matthews

[Beep]

Dave

Not sure about the Preston/Blackpool area but I am experiencing same situation in Central Scotland with Real Radio.

I have "y splitter" cable installed and get TMc locking on but no messages. Suspect that this is extra TMC signals which Medion cannot "understand".

Interested to hear from others.

Beep

[Dave]

Guys, I don't have an answer for you, but if you look at my Navigon review, the screenshots showed similar types of issues.

I wasn't sure if I was receiving bleed over from French stations being on the south coast, or whether the TMC message identifier is just so small that it sometimes thinks it's picking up the identifier when it's not.

[Cerberus]

Check out the topic 4 or 5 down from here headed
'A second entrant into the TMC arena in the UK ?'

I live by Blackpool and have the problem as well. Locks straight onto Century FM as that has a much stronger signal strength than Classic (I do lock on to it sometimes). I usualy have to get out towards Preston before I get it to manually scan again and get a lock onto Classic. Then I have no problems at all. Went from Blackpool to Milton Keynes and back yesterday with out any problems apart from getting the first lock to Classic. I use the Y splitter cable with MN4.

Just been out and tried the GNS-Tester that the other topic mentions. This does show TMC messages being received on the Century FM.

[DaveMatthews]

Thanks, Cerberus.

It sounds like Century are using a message encoding algorithm that MN4 isn't aware of.

Nothing like standards, eh?

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Dave

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