Finally, some good news regarding AM radio

[radiotvnut]

I was scanning the radio dial and found radio station WJRD (1150) out of Tuscaloosa, AL. This station is playing oldies from the '60's through the '80's. They are currently playing "The Fool On The Hill" by Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66. I did a web search and they used to be a talk format. It's rare to have a talk station flip to (decent) music. I'll admit the music is pretty common; but, it's better than anything else we have. Oh, here's comes "Alfie" by Dionne Warwick. Maybe the music selection is a little more obscure. I never heard that song on any FM oldies station. Anyway, I'm located about 95 miles (Meridian, MS) away from the station and it fades in and out; but, is listenable. I may have to put up an outside antenna and find a good AM radio with an RF stage. I know I'm happy at the moment....

[Scorpion8]

[Bigyank]

Ever check this site out?

http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin...sort=freq&sid=

Not one for AM myself!


Yank

[radiotvnut]

The main reason I'm into AM is because I collect tube radios and most of mine don't have FM. I usually end up repairing my radios and then sitting them on the shelf, only turning them on every five years to make sure they still work, because there is nothing decent to listen to in my area. Now, I may get motivated to fix and use more old radios since I've found a decent music station.

[radiotvnut]

I'll add that AM sounds much better to me on a tube radio than on most modern consumer grade stuff. It seems that most of the newer stuff is designed just to pass a signal on AM and that's about it. Even the AM section in my mid '70's Kenwood receiver has poor sensitivity and fidelity. A basic 5 tube radio from the '60's has better fidelity and sensitivity than my Kenwood receiver. I was listening this afternoon on a '50's Zenith Bakelite case AM/FM with good results. The AM sounds almost as good as the FM on that radio.

[Randy Bassham]

There are just some days that I wish I'd never heard anything better than a Bakelite 5 tube AM set, especially during the last 1/2 of the 50's and the 60's. I know I enjoyed it more then.

[Celt]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

I'll add that AM sounds much better to me on a tube radio than on most modern consumer grade stuff. It seems that most of the newer stuff is designed just to pass a signal on AM and that's about it. Even the AM section in my mid '70's Kenwood receiver has poor sensitivity and fidelity. A basic 5 tube radio from the '60's has better fidelity and sensitivity than my Kenwood receiver. I was listening this afternoon on a '50's Zenith Bakelite case AM/FM with good results. The AM sounds almost as good as the FM on that radio.

The older sets had wider bandwidth because the AM band wasn't as crowded when they were made. As the band filled up with more and more stations, manufacturers had to narrow the bandwith and increase selectivity to seperate closely spaced stations, thus reducing overall fidelity. A few sets have selectable bandwidth to take advantage of better fidelity, but usually only can be used for strong local stations or clear channel stations, which there are few of these days.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

I'll add that AM sounds much better to me on a tube radio than on most modern consumer grade stuff. It seems that most of the newer stuff is designed just to pass a signal on AM and that's about it. Even the AM section in my mid '70's Kenwood receiver has poor sensitivity and fidelity. A basic 5 tube radio from the '60's has better fidelity and sensitivity than my Kenwood receiver. I was listening this afternoon on a '50's Zenith Bakelite case AM/FM with good results. The AM sounds almost as good as the FM on that radio.

Zenith's AM/FM radios from the early '60s sound better than today's sets as well. I have a Zenith C845 with eight tubes and an eight-inch speaker, plus a 5" tweeter, that sounds much, much better than most modern radios, even on AM. My Zenith K731 also beats today's Japanese/Korean rebadged stuff by a mile, probably because of the Zenith's 5x7 oval main speaker and a 3" electrostatic tweeter. Both the '731 and the '845 are in real wood cabinets, which I'm sure improves the sound as well.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Celt

The older sets had wider bandwidth because the AM band wasn't as crowded when they were made. As the band filled up with more and more stations, manufacturers had to narrow the bandwith and increase selectivity to seperate closely spaced stations, thus reducing overall fidelity. A few sets have selectable bandwidth to take advantage of better fidelity, but usually only can be used for strong local stations or clear channel stations, which there are few of these days.

A point of interest: The days of clear channels, where only one or, at most, two stations occupied the frequency after local sunset, are a thing of the past. There are no more "clear channel" AM stations these days, due to an FCC ruling about 20 years ago which abolished that classification. Today, these former "clear" channels (a few of which are 700-760, 800, 1100, 1110-1130, 1160, 1190, et al.) are used by former daytime-only stations, which operate at lower nighttime power and often with directional signal patterns. The change was made so that the small towns/rural/suburban areas served by these stations would have local radio 24/7, rather than the local station (which in many very small towns and rural areas miles away from any large city may well be the area's only strong radio signal) signing off at sundown.

However, selectable bandwidth on some older radios could and often does improve the fidelity of local signals, as you noted. Many communications receivers designed for amateur radio have crystal filters with selectable bandwidths; the receiver (Hallicrafters SX-101A) in my first amateur radio station had a switchable crystal filter which could, at its narrowest setting, reduce the audio bandwidth to as little as 500 hertz. This is considered an optimal bandwidth for CW (Morse code) reception in the high-frequency (HF) amateur bands. My current HF amateur radio transceiver (Icom IC-725) has a fixed plug-in optional CW crystal filter, also 500 Hz if I remember correctly.

[Nolan Woodbury]

Interesting discussion.

Jeff, the deregulation you mention falls right in the time period when the AM mega-stations pretty much disappeared in Phoenix. Being so close to Mexico, unregulated signals from south of the border absolutely blowtorch the airwaves here after sundown. Except for a few sports/talk stations, quality AM listening has pretty much vanished...for music anyway.

Good luck and long listening with your new favorite station radiotvnut. Although we're lucky to have some quality FM stations locally, I've occasionally been very disappointed with various programming aspects. Most of us who love radios love listening to them too. It can be tough.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Nolan Woodbury

Interesting discussion.

Jeff, the deregulation you mention falls right in the time period when the AM mega-stations pretty much disappeared in Phoenix. Being so close to Mexico, unregulated signals from south of the border absolutely blowtorch the airwaves here after sundown. Except for a few sports/talk stations, quality AM listening has pretty much vanished...for music anyway.

Nolan, I live within perhaps a mile of the south shore of Lake Erie in northern Ohio, so I hear quite a few Canadian AM stations (CKLW-800 Windsor, CFCO-630 Chatham, plus several Toronto stations including CHWO-AM 740), not to mention many Canadian FMs when the band opens up in the spring, summer and early fall. However, I have never noticed these Canadian AMs taking over the airwaves in this area at night as you say the Mexican stations do in the Phoenix area. What's the difference? I know there are quite a few superpower stations in Mexico, but around here the Canadians pretty much stick with 50kW or less. I have never had one bit of trouble with any Canadian AM station overloading my radios. Those Mexican stations across from Arizona must be running well over 50kW if you say they "blowtorch" the air in the Phoenix area after dark. Are these stations even licensed, or are they pirates, on the air strictly to jam the Phoenix stations? Since you say the Mexican stations are unregulated, I would think they are unlicensed pirates, just out to cause no end of trouble for the legitimate stations in Phoenix and elsewhere in Arizona.

As far as FM radio goes, in my area the stations play mostly rock, oldies, active rock and classic rock, probably, even likely, because Cleveland is the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; the last of the easy-listening stations left the air about 18 years ago. Thank goodness for Internet radio stations, which still play a good variety of music, including easy listening. My favorite Internet station in the latter category is "The Breeze" from Crown Point, Indiana, near Chicago (www.thebreez.com), as I may have mentioned in an earlier post. I can also get easy listening and a wide variety of music on Time Warner digital cable. I don't know if you have digital cable at your house or if the cable company serving your area has converted to digital yet (TW did a complete digital conversion of all systems it owns in northern Ohio last year, including the system serving my small town), but if you do, I'd suggest running it through your Zenith console stereo (don't know if it has external audio inputs) or even your MJ-1035, which I seem to remember does have at least one auxiliary audio input. You won't be disappointed. When I had my cable box connected to my stereo, the sound was excellent. This cable service offers some 45 channels of commercial-free CD-quality digital music; there are absolutely no interruptions except an occasional Emergency Alert System test. There are no commercials and few other interruptions on The Breeze, except for recorded ID announcements every half hour or so.

[radiotvnut]

Another thing that could be done is to feed the audio output of the cable box into one of those small AM transmitters and then tune it in on your antique radio.

As far as our FM selection, we have: NPR, many religious stations, a current top 40 station, two modern country stations, one classic country station, two (c)rap stations, 1 R&B/Southern Soul station, 1 adult contemporary station, and 1 classic rock station. No oldies station anymore. That one is now a (c)rap station. I usually find myself going from the classic country station to the classic rock station to find something I want to hear. The oldies station got so it played only the same 20 songs over and over. That's probably why they went under - not enough variety.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

Another thing that could be done is to feed the audio output of the cable box into one of those small AM transmitters and then tune it in on your antique radio.

As far as our FM selection, we have: NPR, many religious stations, a current top 40 station, two modern country stations, one classic country station, two (c)rap stations, 1 R&B/Southern Soul station, 1 adult contemporary station, and 1 classic rock station. No oldies station anymore. That one is now a (c)rap station. I usually find myself going from the classic country station to the classic rock station to find something I want to hear. The oldies station got so it played only the same 20 songs over and over. That's probably why they went under - not enough variety.

One of the rock stations in this area went from adult-contemporary rock to oldies a couple months ago, exactly the reverse of the former oldies station in your area. Their adult contemporary format wasn't doing so well, I guess. I live between two cities (Cleveland and another lakefront city called Ashtabula), so my FM radio dial is always full of stations. (The AM dial is too, but much of the time there is too much noise to hear much of anything other than strong local stations in the daytime.) My Zenith C845 has an RF stage that works for both AM and FM, so this set is hotter than a firecracker when it comes to RF sensitivity. As I mentioned in my reply to Nolan Woodbury's post, this radio will pick up just about anything within 100 miles of here, just using its built-in antenna, when the FM band is wide open. I regularly hear stations from Erie, Pennsylvania and Youngstown, Ohio (the latter being some 90 miles southeast of me) during band openings, as well as the Canadian FMs I mentioned. I don't even want to think of what this set would pull in if I could hook it up to a good external FM rooftop antenna--the dial would probably be loaded with stations from one end of the dial to the other, with no dead spots whatsoever. I'd try just that, but I live in an apartment building, so cannot erect any kind of outdoor antenna. Speaking of unusually long-distance FM reception, I remember one summer, about 38 years ago, when I was listening to one of the local FMs (top-40 at the time; it's a rap station now) during a severe thunderstorm, and it suddenly was knocked off the air. Imagine my surprise when, a minute or so later, I heard a station from West Palm Beach, Florida, booming in as though it were the local station normally on the frequency. I was listening on a 17-transistor AM/FM/FM-stereo portable radio with just a telescoping whip antenna at the time.

[analog]

Living here in Southern California I remember the "border blasters" from Mexico. Back in the 60s Wolfman Jack was on XERB that transmitted at about 100KW if I remember right maybe more. You could listen to him pretty much from the border to Washington State and most of the western US at night. Other border blasters were XPRS an XETRA from Baja. Those were the days.

[NowhereMan 1966]

We have a few stations here in Pittsburgh that plays music on AM, 620 and 770 kc are the ones on top of my head although there are a few more. Every Saturday night, WABC, 770 kc out of New York plays music from 6 to 10 PM and they come in quite well here in Pittsburgh. The music sounds great over my grandfather's 1953 Philco 5 tube, 2 band, bakelite radio. Even my 1965 Magnavox "Maggie" 8 transistor radio has a nice sound to it.