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  #46  
Old 05-29-2010, 07:03 PM
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electroking electroking is offline
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CBC has many small transmitters to fill up isolated areas operating on 540 kHz, for
some reason. The only CBC AM powerhouse that still exists AFAIK is the French
Toronto transmitter on 860 kHz, an easy to identify catch in Eastern Canada and
NE USA. Regards.
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  #47  
Old 05-29-2010, 09:53 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by electroking View Post
CBC has many small transmitters to fill up isolated areas operating on 540 kHz, for
some reason. The only CBC AM powerhouse that still exists AFAIK is the French
Toronto transmitter on 860 kHz, an easy to identify catch in Eastern Canada and
NE USA. Regards.
Their signal pattern must not include northeastern Ohio, as I have never heard anything on 860 from here (eastern Lake County, Ohio, 33 miles east of downtown Cleveland), even at night. I can hear WHAS-840 in Louisville, Kentucky and WWL-AM 870 in New Orleans after sundown, but in all my years of AM DXing I have yet to hear anything on 860. Perhaps that's because there is a 50kW day/4.7 kW night Cleveland station on 850 that bleeds over to 860 just about everywhere the signal can be heard in northeast Ohio and beyond. The problem is worst in areas very near the transmitter, which is located in a southwestern suburb of Cleveland. If you are within a few miles of the station's towers, their daytime signal will take over your radio dial, even being heard in between other local stations. I lived in a Cleveland suburb about 38 years ago on a street just about a third of a mile from a local FM station on 92.3 MHz. That station came in exceedingly well on my FM radios, on my TV on channel 6, and even on a transistorized stereo tape recorder. Believe it or not, I was even hearing the station, very faintly, at several spots on the ten-meter ham band on my old Hallicrafters SX101-A, which was the receiver in my first ham radio station.

Leaving that suburb (Cleveland Heights, Ohio) three years later cured the problem; it did not repeat itself, either when I moved back to the suburb where I grew up or when I moved to where I live now. I don't have that kind of trouble here since I am perhaps 40 miles from Cleveland's AM and FM radio stations, and at least as far from the city's TV stations. The only thing that could possibly cause me trouble here as far as interference is concerned (but doesn't, thank goodness) is a 1kW/0.5kW (day/night) AM station five miles away. The only problem that station ever caused me (if you can call it a problem) is that it comes in at two points, 900 kHz (0.9 MHz) apart on the digital AM/FM tuner in my stereo system. Most of the time, however, I don't even know the station is there.

I've never forgotten the problems that 27.5-kW ERP station's signal caused me, and I'm sure I never will. I had an aunt who lived only about five miles from Cleveland's TV transmitters; she could get excellent reception on all three (at the time) local network stations, using just a length of wire on the set's antenna terminals. I swear she was getting almost city-grade reception at times without an antenna--that's how strong the signals were in her area.
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  #48  
Old 05-30-2010, 11:40 AM
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AM's far from dead. A good example is being set by an independent operator in St. Cloud (about 75 miles E of me). They have a long-established hard rock FM, an all-sports outlet on 660, a classic country on 800...and recently signed on a nostalgia format ("Uptown Radio") on 1010. They also have a CP (construction permit) for ANOTHER AM...a 250 watter on 540! The 660, 800 & 1010 signals are all directional with sharply-reduced nightttime power, and IIRC the 540 will be directional as well to protect Regina, Sask. Here's the cool part: ALL the AMs run through ONE antenna system through a complicated system of filters, combiners, etc. The system was designed by my friend Mark Persons of M.W. Persons & Associates and works exactly as designed. Mark is a real stickler for quality audio...and the stations' sound shows it. Visit his website @ www.mwpersons.com for pix of this & other installations he's done. Mark's an engineer's engineer for sure.
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  #49  
Old 05-30-2010, 04:05 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by marty59 View Post
Jeffhs, I'd hate to see AM go away!

When I travel, I prefer listening to AM and if it's nightime I'll dx depending on where I am, and I like to hear the weather and road conditions also.

There's also Trucker related shows on at night too..more people may listen to AM then you realize, and like I mentioned I live in a major market area.

It's bad enough that we have to feed our vintage TV's artificial signals but with the mobility of AM (and our vintage radios) we can still have AM!
Me too. I love to listen to music over AM, I even prefer that over FM music. I guess I just think back to when I was a kid. I do believe AM will be with us for a long time to come, AM does have one advantage, it can cover longer distances in the day and much more at night. I like to tune around when I'm out of town and still be able to hear Pittsburgh in places like North Carolina, Florida and so on. My uncle in Florida up until he passed away always listened to KDKA at night and my cousins forever remember him trying to tune it in over the static and so on.

I don't know about how many radio stations there are in Canada but if we went all or even 90% FM in this country, the band would be so overcrowded. I remember even in 1987 when I drove through the San Jauquin Valley on I-5 in California, there were several FM stations battling it out over the same frequency on my car radio. I think it is a mistake to go over to FM all the way, if you're out in the country, at least you still know what is going on by pulling in stations at night.
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  #50  
Old 05-30-2010, 04:08 PM
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Originally Posted by Reece View Post
I can get Chicago fine here in south central PA. Don and Roma in the morning, etc. etc. I can almost always get WBBM and WLS. Early winter mornings in the car I would switch from them to WWL New Orleans, and even WHO, Des Moines sometimes. But could not always get KDKA Pittsburgh. Back in the day when WLS played music, remember "Double-you, ELL, ess: Larry LUjack!"
You could be in a "skip zone" for KDKA where the signal is above you before it comes back down a distance away. Also, you're in a mountainous area which can play tricks with a signal.
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  #51  
Old 05-30-2010, 06:21 PM
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I've experienced amazing skip before,

One day driving home from work, I had an extremely hard time receiving any local stations due to interference from distant stations, but had no problem receiving WQOL 103.7 FM from Vero Beach, FL. No static whatsoever despite moving at 55mph down US167.

On the day of the DTV changeover, as alot of stations here in AR and over in TN switched over, I was able to receive WUND-2 from Edenton NC, and later on, KDKA and WTAE from Pittsburgh, PA. KDKA came in clear enough for a good amount of time that day, for me to watch part of a soap opera along with some message on the bottom about the DTV transition.
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  #52  
Old 05-30-2010, 07:36 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by electronjohn View Post
AM's far from dead...
In the US, yes, you are correct (I hope we have AM here for quite a while, as it is still an excellent medium for news, local emergency information and those in FM fringe areas, not to mention AM DXers), but in Canada they are silencing AMs left and right, as Rodzilla mentioned in his post. I cannot begin to imagine a city such as Halifax, NS with absolutely no AM radio except one small station on 540 kHz. I don't know how big Halifax is, but unless the one remaining local station has a 50kW signal, a network of repeaters, or Halifax is a very small city, I can't see how one station can cover the entire area. I live in an area of northeastern Ohio that several Cleveland-area stations do not reach at night and can just barely be heard during the daytime; this describes a 500-watt daytime/42-watt nighttime station near my hometown to a T, and can probably describe a lot of other small, local-service stations--many located in small towns or suburban areas--as well.

Fifty-kilowatt stations such as CKLW in Windsor, Ontario will likely be around for many years to come, even if and when many of the smaller AMs in Canada eventually go silent or to FM. CKLW was a top-40 rock and roll station on 800 kHz in the '60s-'70s, flipping to a news-talk format some time later (I'm not sure exactly when the switch actually occurred). Their FM arm for many years was CKLW-FM on 93.7; I don't know what their format was at that time (probably elevator music), but I do know that some time either in the late '90s or very early in the 21st century the station changed its call sign to CIDR and adopted a modern rock format. CKLW-TV is now CBET-TV channel 9, serving Windsor and Detroit; it is a CBC television network affiliate. I was able to see the TV station here in northeastern Ohio from early spring until late fall before I got cable; I still hear the FM station on occasion when the conditions are right.

The FM radio dial in Canada must not be nearly as crowded with stations as it is here in the US if many Canadian AMs are going silent and, in many cases, transferring their entire program schedules to FM. This may well be why many US AM stations go silent rather than switching to streaming audio over the Internet or to FM when they find themselves on the verge of failure--again, the FM dial in most areas of this country is far too crowded as it is, with most existing FMs already running established formats (some having been on these stations for decades) and unwilling to abandon them any time soon. I think of a small station about 20 miles south of here that went silent about five years ago, after going through no fewer than four formats--including a satellite feed from Sporting News Radio--in just under 40 years. I wonder if that station might still be active today had it switched to FM, if only to a low-power signal at the low end of the dial, below 92 MHz. This would have worked out perfectly (in fact the results would have probably been phenomenal); since the station was located in Geauga County, Ohio, the elevation ASL (above sea level) of which is much higher than most other parts of this area, any station replacing it would have probably had incredible coverage of the county, several surrounding counties, and much of the greater Cleveland area as well.
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Last edited by Jeffhs; 05-30-2010 at 07:56 PM.
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  #53  
Old 05-30-2010, 08:36 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hemingray View Post
I've experienced amazing skip before,

One day driving home from work, I had an extremely hard time receiving any local stations due to interference from distant stations, but had no problem receiving WQOL 103.7 FM from Vero Beach, FL. No static whatsoever despite moving at 55mph down US167.

On the day of the DTV changeover, as alot of stations here in AR and over in TN switched over, I was able to receive WUND-2 from Edenton NC, and later on, KDKA and WTAE from Pittsburgh, PA. KDKA came in clear enough for a good amount of time that day, for me to watch part of a soap opera along with some message on the bottom about the DTV transition.
I had that happen to me just north of the Arkansas border a few months ago - for a few minutes I got a station at 104.7 from Hollywood, FL, then a few minutes later it changed to a station from north Florida - drowning out the 104.7 I was trying to listen to that's about 70 miles from where I was.
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  #54  
Old 05-30-2010, 11:58 PM
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I had my very first ever digital FM DX last week with my Sangean HDT-1 HDRadio that I've had for about 6 months now. KDWB 101.3 from Minneapolis was coming in good enough for their HD to pop on for a few minutes here in southwest WI. A distance of 170 miles.
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  #55  
Old 05-31-2010, 12:32 AM
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jr_tech jr_tech is offline
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Cool ! My almost dx (about 110 miles away) classical station increased the power of their digital sidebands by 6db a few months ago and are almost 100% digital copy now on my Sony F1HD/APS9 set up. Some stations have been able to increase by 10db... can't wait 'till the tropo gets a little better, could land a few digital Dx logs this summer.

jr
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  #56  
Old 05-31-2010, 01:23 AM
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wa2ise wa2ise is offline
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IIRC, Canada used to have AM broadcast radio stations up around 6MHz in very sparsely populated areas. As a signal on 6MHz could cover very large areas. Like in the northern end of their various provinces, or in the area just south of the north pole.
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  #57  
Old 05-31-2010, 03:40 AM
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Starting mid-week I'm going to be laid up for several days and plan to do a lot of DXing. I have my Superadio, Realistic DX-440 and '42 Zenith 14-tube monster at bedside, along with some coax run to that side of the room to make use of my outdoor antenna for FM. Just wish I had a rotator on that thing. I was going to patch in a portable cassette recorder but the belt went bad, c'est la vie.
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  #58  
Old 06-10-2010, 08:34 PM
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NowhereMan 1966 NowhereMan 1966 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wa2ise View Post
IIRC, Canada used to have AM broadcast radio stations up around 6MHz in very sparsely populated areas. As a signal on 6MHz could cover very large areas. Like in the northern end of their various provinces, or in the area just south of the north pole.
CFRB in Toronto (1010 kc) still does broadcast on 6070 kc, I pick them up here in Pittsburgh.
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