Advice Needed Low Symbol Rate Dutch Radio feeds on 16°E

[Adam792]

Just wondering what dish size people have managed to lock these on? I can't seem to get anything on a zone 2 Sky dish, but that's on the small side for 16°E anyway so not much of a surprise.

They're presumably used to feed some of the FM transmitters of the networks in question in the Netherlands.

Can anyone with a PC card tell if there are any surrounding frequencies carrying data, with a slightly wider symbol rate (something around 1000-2000 perhaps)? I'm curious as to whether they may also be using satellite for the backhaul of any of the Netherlands' DAB+ multiplexes.



Source:

https://www.flysat.com/en/satellite/eutelsat-16a

 

[SimonE]

Adam, I think the signal on 11078H has left. The rest are around 10dB on my 1.2m dish/

 

[satesco]

Try muxes in the upper band with 405 Ks, and further down are lower symbol rates.Who knows, maybe radio streams are used?

 

[Adam792]

Thanks both, I'd missed that there are a couple of others at the top of the band too!

 

[Adam792]

Try muxes in the upper band with 405 Ks, and further down are lower symbol rates.Who knows, maybe radio streams are used?

Thanks! So it seems like there are some frequencies surrounding the higher up ones, but these are also very low symbol rate. They could be other radio feeds for sure. Unfortunately I can't lock any of those either on the small dish, including the known 405 Ks ones from Belgium and the Netherlands (Joe FM, Q-Music BEL, Q-Music NL).

Doesn't look like anything wide enough for a DAB+ feed though (requires around 1-2Mbps of capacity depending on the type of ETI transport used). Any sign of anything surrounding the 11069-11071 frequencies?

 

[s-band]

I never had much luck using Crazyscan on a TBS6903 They are too close together for CS to separate. If you enter the SR, there's a chance of locking as long as you get the exact frequency. However, with a lot of messing around I did get something using the BATC tuner with Scan & Tioune.

I can't find any record of the streams on the Dutch MUXs



I had more luck with the DVB-S2 GUI software from the AMSAT-DL forum



All Ku above on a 1.5m dish and captured in January 2021 using a Pluto SDR

Then there's Radio Immaculée Conception on 21564H 128ks/s on Mini Tiourne and 1.2m dish
I did manage to get manual lock using the 6903 but CS tends to lock to the wider signal just below, see spectrum plot.
Captures were in 2017/8

 

[satesco]

I haven't noticed any extra signal around the muxes from 11069-11071 H, even with IQmonitor.
Instead, 11071 H has a new symbol rate of 365 Ks, not 547 Ks, as reported on FlySat.
(If you still want to find out the content of such IP streams, I would invite you to try 7.0E, where I found them on 12507 H and 12508 H)

 

[deeptho]

With TBS609x, manual entry of symbol rate I achieved lock on the scond attempt on 11069H.
The audio (radio 538) plays normally. They are currently asking a listener to provide the name of Winnie the Pooh's pig.

 

[deeptho]

No luck on the other nearby muxes with this card

 

[satesco]

I never had much luck using Crazyscan on a TBS6903 They are too close together for CS to separate. If you enter the SR, there's a chance of locking as long as you get the exact frequency. However, with a lot of messing around I did get something using the BATC tuner with Scan & Tioune.

...

Tests with tbs6903 card for low symbol rate reception at 16.0E.
I use HW 11 vers and driver 1.0.0.5
I'm not sure that this How-to Crazyscan will help those who don't have strong signals to lock low symbol rate muxes at 16.0E and will be able to listen to Dutch radio programs.
Signal strength is the first and most important thing to lock these muxes, of course together with a DVB card capable of reading and locking low symbol rate.
This condition is valid for the DVB card regardless of the installed operating system.
For neumoDVB, I used the 6903x card

 

[SimonE]

Adam, I wonder if we are looking on the wrong satellite. Astra @23.5E is full of muxes for the Netherlands. Some countries put their DAB signals amongst regular TV signals. Do you have the kit to examine them closely for DAB signals? If you want to make use of my 1.2 CM dish do PM me and pop over. I would be interested to look with you. SimonE

 

[Adam792]

I never had much luck using Crazyscan on a TBS6903 They are too close together for CS to separate. If you enter the SR, there's a chance of locking as long as you get the exact frequency. However, with a lot of messing around I did get something using the BATC tuner with Scan & Tioune.

I can't find any record of the streams on the Dutch MUXs

View attachment 145056

I had more luck with the DVB-S2 GUI software from the AMSAT-DL forum

View attachment 145057 View attachment 145058 View attachment 145059

All Ku above on a 1.5m dish and captured in January 2021 using a Pluto SDR

Then there's Radio Immaculée Conception on 21564H 128ks/s on Mini Tiourne and 1.2m dish
I did manage to get manual lock using the 6903 but CS tends to lock to the wider signal just below, see spectrum plot.
Captures were in 2017/8

View attachment 145063 View attachment 145061 View attachment 145060

I haven't noticed any extra signal around the muxes from 11069-11071 H, even with IQmonitor.
Instead, 11071 H has a new symbol rate of 365 Ks, not 547 Ks, as reported on FlySat.
(If you still want to find out the content of such IP streams, I would invite you to try 7.0E, where I found them on 12507 H and 12508 H)

With TBS609x, manual entry of symbol rate I achieved lock on the scond attempt on 11069H.
The audio (radio 538) plays normally. They are currently asking a listener to provide the name of Winnie the Pooh's pig.

Would anybody with capable equipment and a big enough dish be able to provide a TS dump of 11053H 1496 3/4 DVB-S2 32APSK?

The parameters are making me curious about potential DAB+. I imagine it's likely to be GSE, so will require a card like the TBS6903X that can dump the raw GSE into TS for further processing.

Thanks!

 

[Adam792]

Adam, I wonder if we are looking on the wrong satellite. Astra @23.5E is full of muxes for the Netherlands. Some countries put their DAB signals amongst regular TV signals. Do you have the kit to examine them closely for DAB signals? If you want to make use of my 1.2 CM dish do PM me and pop over. I would be interested to look with you. SimonE

I haven't got any specific equipment for this, my PC satellite card is actually fairly basic compared to some on here, but I do have the DAB decapsulation software (eti-tools) which I use to decode the more accessible DAB feeds like the French muxes on 5°W and the German ones on 7°E amongst others. I could definitely show you those if you were interested. I'm curious about the NRK ones on 1°W too, but as well as a bigger dish than mine they require a more advanced PC card as mentioned above (to be able to decode the new GSE format)

 

[satesco]

From the beginning, mux 11059 H moved to 11039 with the same parameters (1496,3/4,32APSK). I tried to lock it with the 6903x card, but for reasons that escape me now, I did not succeed, although the signal is relatively good.
With the 6983, it was easier; only the recording/streaming was very slow and time-consuming. After many tens of minutes, I managed to have a file of almost 6MB with the TBS Recorder. I hope it is enough for what you are looking for.

 

[SimonE]

I haven't got any specific equipment for this, my PC satellite card is actually fairly basic compared to some on here, but I do have the DAB decapsulation software (eti-tools) which I use to decode the more accessible DAB feeds like the French muxes on 5°W and the German ones on 7°E amongst others. I could definitely show you those if you were interested. I'm curious about the NRK ones on 1°W too, but as well as a bigger dish than mine they require a more advanced PC card as mentioned above (to be able to decode the new GSE format)

Adam, With my 1.2m CM dish and a PLL LNB, my HD Ranger locks to it with 10dB C/N. Its actually on 11040H s/r 1497 ACM/VCM mode. Unfortunately I don't have the kit to do a dump of the data but if you want to come round with your kit and try you will be most welcome. SimonE

 

[s-band]

@satesco I only get 9.5dB but the data from TBS recorder is stored at a rate of about 32kb every 2 seconds which sounds similar to your test.
@Adam792 I can record raw IQ up to 8Ms/s if that's any use to you

 

[Adam792]

Managed to get one of the higher band ones to lock, on an 80cm dish.

12577H 405 with Q-music Belgium. The RDS is present (Radio Text decoded natively in Enigma2) for the FM transmitters that this presumably feeds.

 

[Adam792]

Managed to get one of the higher band ones to lock, on an 80cm dish.

12577H 405 with Q-music Belgium. The RDS is present (Radio Text decoded natively in Enigma2) for the FM transmitters that this presumably feeds.

This has quite a full set of RDS data attached to it - it sends the PS, Radio Text, Travel flag and various other stuff, including the RDS PI code (6306)!

I can't lock any of the others, this one must just be that little bit stronger than the rest.

16:30:20 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x0A [RT] | Q Sounds Better With You
16:30:21 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x02 [PS] |  Qmusic
16:30:23 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x03 [TA] | OFF
16:30:25 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x01 [PI] | 6306
16:30:29 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x02 [PS] |  Qmusic
16:30:31 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x03 [TA] | OFF
16:30:31 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x05 [MS] | ON
16:30:33 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x03 [TA] | OFF
16:30:35 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x0A [RT] | Q Sounds Better With You
16:30:38 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x02 [PS] |  Qmusic
16:30:38 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x04 [DI] | Stereo / Static PTY
16:30:40 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x07 [PTY] | 0xa
16:30:43 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x0A [RT] | ELTON JOHN & BRITNEY SPEARS - Hold Me Closer

 

[EnoSat]

How do I get to the full RDS statement?

 

[Adam792]

How do I get to the full RDS statement?
View attachment 146127View attachment 146125View attachment 146126

I'm using a little Python script I wrote, which can run on the Enigma2 receiver itself via command line (as long as you install python3 with 'opkg install python3')

It will only work for radio stations that use a separate RDS PID, not where the RDS is encapsulated inside the audio stream. Those Polish radio stations (RMF Maxxx etc) on 23.5°E and the Germans on 19.2°E encapsulate it within the AAC audio packets themselves, which is difficult to decode - you have to decode the entire audio stream to get the RDS UECP packets. It's easier with MP2 stations like a couple of the RMF ones, but again you have to decode the audio ES to get at the data.

This Belgian station uses a separate PID though which is easier to decode in this way. PID 103 on 16°E 12577H -

You'll need to remove .txt from the end of the attached file so it's just uecp.py and then you can use it to view the RDS on the Enigma2 box while tuned to the channel by running -

dvbsnoop -s ts -b 103 | python3 uecp.py 103

To get similar output to above -

17:30:18 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x03 [TA] | OFF
17:30:21 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x0A [RT] | Q Sounds Better With You
17:30:22 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x02 [PS] |  Qmusic
17:30:27 | ADDR: 00000 | DSN: 0x0 | PSN: 0x0 | 0x01 [PI] | 6306

This also works for others, as the French stations on 5°W for example also use a separate RDS PID -

5°W 11480H PIDs 140, 240, 340 (these have data for all of the Radio France stations), 1140, 1240, 1340, 3140, 4140
5°W 11461H PIDs 161 (NRJ/Nostalgie/R&C/Chérie FM), 471 (Europe 1/Virgin/RFM), 481 (Radio France).

Some of the German stations on 19.2°E also use the system, usually it's APID+1 for the correct PID if they do. (e.g. Hamony.fm)