Whilst driving my 98 Mondeo tonight the radio (standard as fitted) suddenly increased the volume level, as it would for a traffic announcement - which was switched off. However when I looked at the display it was alternating between the radio station name and 'alarm'. The car alarm wasn't sounding and the hazard lights were'nt flashing. What was this? Is the radio linked to the alarm system and shows a message when the alarms triggered or was it some sort of signal from the radio station? It stopped after a few seconds. Never done it before or since.
strange radio happening
Sep 05, 2004
4 Replies
RDS has an alarm system, for emergency broadcasts to be made.
It's sort of similar to TA/TP, in that it'll break through mute or CD/Casette playback.
IIRC, it's part of the "Emergency Broadcast System", to make important announcements.
I'd _guess_ the station you were listening to accidentally pressed a panic button.
Pete.
RDS does support an emergency flag - EWS. I think the idea is that in an emergency the huge numbers of radios could be switched over to some information channel.
I don't know if any manufacturer has ever implemented it though - I'm fairly sure that the idea was that it would not be possible to turn it off though.
I'd have thought that if a local radio station had managed to transmit this signal then someone would be in trouble :)
Google finds a few mentions (just to confirm I'm not going completely mad!)
formatting link
for example.
Just an idea...
Darren
The message from snipped-for-privacy@ukc.ac.uk (dmc) contains these words:
Pirates? Not unknown for them to hijack the Traffic Alert flag to make you listen to their boom-banga-crash stuff.
they have done it a few times to radio one not that i listen to it per say, but it does get flicked on oce in a while, mainly on a thursday midday type time to listen to the movie reviews
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