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    There are Two Ways to Listen to Gtfm

 

 

1. ON THE RADIO - Find us on 107.9fm in Pontypridd, the southern part of Rhondda Cynon Taf and surrounding areas. Since summer 2007 Gtfm's 107.9 transmitter has been providing a stronger signal than had previously been possible (on 106.9) in Pontypridd itself and particularly the communities to the north of it, including Glyncoch, Ynysybwl, Cilfynydd and Abercynon - as well as westward to Porth, Tonypandy and into the Rhondda Valleys. Good reception is also maintained southward via Taff’s Well to M4 Junction 32 and most of Radyr, as well as westward along the M4 between junction 33 and the Bridgend/Pyle turn-offs. Favourable reception reports have also been received from central and western Cardiff, Cardiff Bay, the Vale of Glamorgan, Mountain Ash and Aberdare, though the signal is more patchy in these areas because of the shadows cast by local hills and/or interference from other stations.

2. VIA THE INTERNET - Gtfm streams its sound 'live' on the internet via this website in two formats, courtesy of the University of Glamorgan. Click the links (top right of the home page) to listen either to a stereo Mp3 webstream (which can be heard via mp3 media players including i-Tunes, Windows Media Player and Winamp) or a QuickTime high-quality mono webstream (for which you'll need to install a 'QuickTime' player from Apple, or use any other player capable of decoding AAC/Mpeg 4, such as Real Player SP). Click for more info on web streaming (etc)

If you have an i-phone you can hear Gtfm via the 'TuneIn Radio' application. Its available free from the Apple App Store (was priced @ 59p).

 

 

FM Reception Advice

Weather Effects

 

If you listen to us on 107.9fm some way from our Pontypridd transmitter, you may experience more background hiss and interference than usual during what the boffins call 'signal lift conditions'. These can occur during settled spells of dry weather caused by high air pressure conditions (shown as a big 'H' on TV weather maps). Lift conditions cause radio and TV signals to travel further than usual, making distant stations which share our frequency stronger enough to cause interference. If its any consolation, we will probably be doing the same to them! The problem gets washed away when the rainy weather returns.

A dramatic example of 'lift' conditions occurred recently when the whole FM band in South Wales was full of exciteable Italian voices one morning. Someone even rang us up to ask if our presenter was speaking Italian!

 

Out of Area FM Reception

 

As a result of providing stronger signals to the Pontypridd/Lower Valleys area, reception on 107.9 is generally not as good as it was up to summer 2007 on 106.9 towards the Bristol Channel coast including parts of Cardiff, plus Caerphilly and everywhere to the east of both places. This is partly because more hills lie between our new transmitter and listeners in these areas and partly because of interference on our new frequency from Bath FM, plus ‘adjacent channel’ interference from Nova Radio (in Weston-Super-Mare) on 107.7.

If you are experiencing poor off-air reception on 107.9, there are two things you can do:

A. Listen on-line via this website;

B. Consider investing in a directional FM aerial pointed at Pontypridd with its rods mounted upright – i.e. in the vertical plane, unless you live to the west of the town (eg in the Rhondda or Cynon Valleys), where horizontal may work better. But you should only consider this (potentially expensive) option if you have a suitable FM ‘tuner’ or radio with an external aerial socket and can already hear some sort of signal from Gtfm already on 107.9 - even if it is accompanied by interference from one or both of the radio stations named above. In that situation a directional FM aerial should do a good job of focussing our signal and reducing the effect of the other stations as they lie in the opposite direction.

 

 

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