[Jeffhs]

I always thought the aircraft band began just above the FM broadcast band, at 108 MHz.

I didn't know until now that stores like K-Mart even used FM SCA subcarriers for their in-store broadcasting network (if they have or had one). I always thought SCA was used almost exclusively for background music, a.k.a. storecasting.

When I lived in an east-side Cleveland suburb, I used to hear aircraft transmissions on one of my FM radios. I would hear them while listening to an FM station about 50 miles away on 97.1 MHz. The station was broadcasting easy listening at the time, and it was weird, to say the least, to hear a pilot trying to contact the control tower -- blasting in right over top of the station's beautiful music program.

That station plays rock music now, however, and I have since moved (as of 12 years ago) to an area of northeastern Ohio, not considered a Cleveland suburb, in which I no longer have the aircraft-radio interference problem on my FM radios. This is probably because the village in which I now live is almost 50 miles from the Cleveland airport; when I was in the suburbs, I was only perhaps 5 or so miles distant from a smaller airport not affiliated with Cleveland's airfield. Airplanes would fly overhead from that airport regularly, and, whenever they would fly over my home and I happened to be listening to 97.1, I'd hear the radio transmissions clear as any bell -- wiping out the 97.1 FM station, of course.

Now that I am so far from the nearest passenger airport, as I said, I no longer get interference on my FM radios from aircraft radio. On most of my radios that doesn't surprise me but what does, is that I also have no aircraft interference whatsoever when I listen to FM stations on my Aiwa bookshelf stereo system. That system has one of the world's worst FM tuners, IMHO, and I live over 30 miles from every FM station in Cleveland -- I must use an external Terk "tower" FM antenna (without the amplifier) to hear most of the city's stations in stereo.

I am surprised, however, as poorly designed as the digital FM tuner in my stereo system seems to be, that I am not getting more aircraft interference on so-called "local" stations from Cleveland. I guess I should chalk that up to the fact that I am 50-odd miles from the airport, and planes rarely if ever fly over my apartment.