Finally, some good news regarding AM radio
 

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....

:thmbsp:

Ever check this site out?

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

Not one for AM myself!
:D

Yank

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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? :scratch2: 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.

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.

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.

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.

About 10 to 15 years ago i was in California, and there was this Mexican station on 91.1 FM that played "modern rock" (nowadays we call it 80's music). Yes, in the middle of our college radio subband. Never did figure out what their real callsign was, they ran ID at :15 and :45 of the hour, in Spanish, which was pretty much unintelligible. They had the nickname "91X". You could hear them to about 250 miles from the Mexican border.

I had a Zenith integrated stereo system in the early '80s that had about the worst AM tuner I have ever heard. No kidding--mine was so bad I was getting short wave on the AM broadcast band after sundown. (The AM reception in my area at that time, near-suburban Cleveland east of town, wasn't all that great either; I think if I had held on to that system when I moved to where I live now, a small NE Ohio town some 40 miles from Cleveland stations, it would have been a setup for one heck of a letdown--in other words, the AM section of this system was good for near-suburban reception, but get out much further than 15 miles from the stations and the AM performance drops like a stone.) The irony was that the FM reception was very good, typical Zenith. That system must have had an AM tuner section designed as you said; just well enough to pass a signal--nothing more, nothing less. The fact that the AM tuner in my system was picking up shortwave stations on the broadcast band at night leads me to believe that the tuner was extremely poorly designed and usable, as I said, only in strong signal areas.

The AM tuner in my present stereo system, an Aiwa NSX-A888 mini system bought new in 1999, has problems as well--I think. There is a 1kW AM station on 1460 kHz in my area that comes in at two points on the digital AM tuner, 560 and 1460 kHz, 900 kHz apart. If this station were a big 50kW bruiser I would suspect it was overloading the front end of my tuner, but this particular station is only 1kW days and 0.5kW (500 watts) nights. Since my apartment is some five miles (more or less) from the station's transmitter, I don't think I'm getting any huge amount of signal on that particular station. That leaves only one thing--the design of the tuner itself. Again, it goes back to what you said about the slap-dash manner in which AM tuner sections of even expensive stereo receivers are built, especially models of the last 30-35 years or so. Like yourself, I have vintage table radios that sound better on AM than even my bookshelf system; lately I've been listening to my Zenith MJ1035, an early FM stereo receiver from the 1960s. Except for some hum in the sound and not a heck of a lot of audio level (but enough to get decent listening volume), this radio sounds better than any modern radio I own, except perhaps for my 1958 Zenith C-845.

The makers of stereo receivers over the last three decades or so have probably decided to concentrate their efforts on the FM tuners and just put in an AM section that isn't much better than a crystal set. There isn't that much worth listening to on AM anymore anyway (except for stations such as Toronto's AM 740 and possibly other small U.S. stations), most of it being talk, sports or other non-music programming, so there is really no need for wide bandwidth in the AM tuner these days. I don't know if very many people who own these stereo receivers even listen to them on AM (you are apparently one of those few who do); after all, when one spends a large amount of money on a stereo system, he/she will almost certainly be listening to the FM tuner and running their turntables, cassette decks, CD systems, etc. through the amplifier. AM radio was never meant to be a high-fidelity music medium in the first place; but then again, the music played by stations such as AM 740 was never hi-fi stuff either (remember, those songs are anywhere from 30 to 80 years old or more, some possibly even predating electric phonographs and having been digitally remastered).

AM stereo, which was supposed to improve the sound of AM radio, went bust in the early 1980s, as did quadraphonic sound. I'll never forget how an article in a late-sixties issue of the (now defunct) Electronics Experimenter magazine began: "It's fantastic! It's colossal! ... and it is also A BOMB!"

Quad sound was a bomb, all right. It lasted through the 70s and the very early eighties, but it died long about 1983; the same thing happened with Dolby FM, though Dolby has made a comeback as it is now used extensively in home-theater audio systems. I don't know to this day if there were any FM stations in the northeastern Ohio area that broadcast Dolby-encoded signals. I have a Radio Shack SCT-11 cassette tape deck which has Dolby capability for both tape and FM, but I cannot seem to notice much of a difference in the sound when I use the Dolby decoder with my commercially-recorded (Time-Life Music Service) cassettes, almost all of which have been recorded using Dolby noise reduction.

I don't know that the sound of AM radio will ever even come close to the full fidelity of a good FM stereo signal. The reason is the difference in modes and, as I said, the fact that AM by its very nature is not a high-fidelity music medium. I don't care how much processing goes into the signal at the station; if the receiver is of poor or mediocre design, the audio will sound not much better than a table radio, and that's being kind.

There was another oldies station I used to listen to at night: WSAI out of Cincinnati, OH (I think). They played what I call "real oldies" from the '50's and '60's that the FM boys forgot about. Then, one night I turned them on just to discover that they too had switched to talk.

I do have an old Heathkit Hi-Fi wideband AM tuner that I want to play with one day.

God, how I miss WSAI ! They came booming in here w/little or no fade...And the music was top-notch, too, the "2nd, 3rd, & 4th" level of hits that the FM hotshots won't touch w/a 10-foot pole...

I like oldies as well, Sandy, and would often listen to WSAI in Cincinnati after dark when it played those great old hits (its 50kW signal boomed in at my former home 15 miles east of Cleveland and still does where I live now, 15 miles further east). The station switched to a talk format some time ago, however, and dropped the oldies without a backward glance. Cincy's other music station, WCKY 1530, did the same thing and became an ESPN sports station (1530 Homer, The Sports Animal!), so now, that city's AM dial is like that of almost every other city in the country these days--all or mostly non-music programming.


There is one FM station some 35 miles east of me that plays darn nearly all the hits from the 1950s through the 1970s, even some rare songs that didn't get much air play even when they were new (and would have eventually faded darn nearly into oblivion, if not for unique oldies stations like this); I like it and listen to it often. Using the call sign WZOO, this station is at 102.5 and puts in a very good signal along the Lake Erie shoreline from Erie, Pennsylvania back into the far suburban Cleveland area. The city of Cleveland itself has an excellent oldies station on 105.7 as well. This one is known as WMJI, and has been playing what were at the time America's best '60s, 70s (and now '80s) classic hits since 1981. I listen to this station often as well, especially on my old Zenith MJ-1035. Maybe it's just me, but I think those great old classic gold hits sound better when listened to on a vintage radio with a high fidelity audio stage. What amazes me as far as WZOO is concerned is that a lot, and I mean quite a few, of their oldies are broadcast in stereo. I'm at a loss to explain this, as I'm sure a large number of those oldies were not originally recorded in stereo--especially in the fifties when stereo records were new and there was no such thing as stereo FM yet (the FCC did not authorize U.S. FM stations to transmit under the multiplex system used today until 1961), although there were some experiments done in the late '50s with a system known as "AM-FM stereo" in which the right channel program information was carried over a city's AM station and the left channel would be broadcast over the same city's FM station, or vice-versa. From what I understand of it, the system, which was a Rube Goldberg lashup at best, worked after a fashion but had problems; for example, if the listener were out of range of either the AM or FM station, he/she would not hear fully one half of the program. When the new multiplex standards were approved in 1961 the situation brightened, however, and the old AM-FM stereo system was relegated to the annals of history; by the end of the '60s there were more stations jumping on the stereo bandwagon than one could shake a stick at (the seventies saw a continuation of this trend as well), as the new multiplex system became the standard for stereo FM in this country. Today, almost all commercial (and even college/NPR) FM stations transmit in stereo; only very small low-budget stations in small towns still broadcast in monaural. I remember one FM station in Cleveland in the early '70s, originally set up for full stereo multiplex, that was forced to transmit monophonically for a short time when a fire at a telephone company relay station knocked out one of the station's stereo channels (this was some 35 years before STLs [studio-transmitter links], rather than physical wire telephone lines, were being used to link radio station studios and transmitters). What a mess. The station eventually got back on the air in stereo, but I'm sure any engineer who was working at that station at that time will never forget "the day half the music died" (with apologies to Don McLean and his '70s hit American Pie) at station WGCL (now classic rock 98.5 WNCX) in Cleveland.

I pretty much wrote off AM after selling my old Atwater Kent years ago. Stereo tuners from the latter '60s onwards for the most part suck on AM. Never had an AM tuner in my main listening system until buying a Philips 6731 AM/FM tuner. The AM section is worth the going price of the unit. More recently picked up an Eton S350DL and having a blast doing some DX'ing with it and an old Candle AM/FM/SW portable 12 transistor radio. I am spending as much time listening to AM 740 here in Toronto as CBC-2 on FM that is my main FM station.

Awhile back I picked up a Stromberg carlson wood cabinet radio from 1939. It had SW and AM and it was the nicest sounding AM radio i ever listened to. Someone threw this out. It was so clean I could eat off of it. I eventually sold it since I have no interest in SW or AM for the most part. Anyways, my car AM radio is so susceptible to interference it isn't even funny. My vintage Kenwood KT7500 does a pretty great job with a long wire antenna, especially at nighttime.

Scaned the AM dial today and was surprised to hear four stations had abandoned their talk-radio format, returning to music.

Two offered excellent fidelity too.

What kind of music?

Last night as I was spinning the dial I hit an AM station playing classical. Did not get the call sign as I was heading down to 740 to listen to the Martin & Lewis show. I don't recall hearing the classical before and on Wednesday, as 740 has the old time radio programs on Monday and Tuesday, I'll search for it again. I'm beginning to think maybe with the realignment of broadcasting AM is making an attempt to come back int the spotlight as the free alternative.

In the car, I'm almost 100% listening to 740 now.

How? Being in Queens, New York, you are in the primary signal area of every AM station in New York City, most of which are 50kW. I am amazed your tuner isn't overloaded to saturation or worse by the tremendous signal your wire antenna feeds into it; it would seem to me that you would now have so much signal from just the local stations that DXing between stations would be extremely difficult, if not downright impossible. Your tuner must be extremely (almost incredibly) selective, IMHO, if you can hear anything other than local New York stations with a wire antenna.

You are using a part of your tuner (the external AM antenna input) most people don't even know exists, as most people are content just to use the small pivoting loopstick AM antenna mounted to the backs of most tuners if they listen to AM at all. Many true audiophiles, however, will go to the ends of the earth (even to the extent of putting up a deep-fringe FM antenna on a 50-foot tower) to get excellent FM reception from as many stations as possible--even in metropolitan areas with 20 or more local stations. Again, your Kenwood tuner must have an above-average or even excellent AM section (with selectivity variable down to a gnat's eyelash[!]) if you are getting as many stations as you mention; not like the poor excuses for AM tuners found in many otherwise excellent stereo receivers.

It's a good tuner but what I meant was that I can listen to local AM with nice fidelity and signal, but yeah I can't get anything else since we are being bombarded by local AM...

Twenty years ago or more I would have guessed you probably stumbled onto New York's 50kW WQXR-AM 1560. That station simulcast New York's classical WQXR-FM 96.3 for many years, until WQXR-AM was converted to Radio Disney and its call sign changed to WQEW. WQXR is now available in the New York area on FM at 96.3, although it may well have an Internet audio stream as well. I live near Cleveland which used to have an excellent classical music station, WCLV 95.5; that station was purchased by one of its founders several years ago and promptly moved to 104.9, which makes it nearly unlistenable in certain areas 30+ miles east of Cleveland due to a strong station at 104.7, just 0.2 MHz down the dial. Fortunately, however, WCLV does have an Internet stream (www.wclv.com), but it is usable only if your computer's media player can handle Ogg Vorbis streams.

Toronto's AM 740 is a breath of fresh air on today's AM radio dial. My Zenith TransOceanic Royal 1000 is more or less locked on that station due to a broken dial cord, but that doesn't bother me because 740's music is so good. I live very close to the south shore of Lake Erie and hear 740 nearly 24/7. This station is living proof that there are still music radio stations to be heard on AM radio; it just takes a little looking to find them. AM 740 is unique in that it has, as its air personalities (these people are far more than mere disk jockeys, IMHO--they are too darn good at what they do; in fact, one of them, Bill Gable, used to be an announcer, and a darn good one at that, for a Cleveland station some 35 years ago) make a particular point of mentioning, the widest and best coverage area of any Canadian AM radio station. Its 50kW signal covers the eastern Great Lakes area including the entire Lake Erie shoreline from Toledo east to Buffalo, greater Toronto of course, and the entire northeastern United States. I don't know if they reduce their power output or change antenna signal patterns (or both) after sundown (several posters here have mentioned that 740 may only be heard in their areas between seven and eleven p.m.), but that shouldn't matter, as the station has an Internet stream at www.am740.ca as well as their regular 50kW signal on 740 kHz, so you can hear the station even in areas its OTA signal does not or cannot reach. Listen to AM740 on the Internet and you may well find that the stream sounds better than the station's over-the-air signal, especially if, as I do, you have your computer's audio running through your stereo system. The station will also sound great through your car stereo's audio system. If you are up late at night, AM 740 has a very good automated music program from midnight until six a.m. as well; no air personalities, few commercials, just lots of great music from radio's golden age. I forget the title of this wonderful program, although "Jukebox 740" seems to stick in my head as I write this.

Commercial radio is a very competitive business, where numbers are everything. It may well be that many talk radio stations, especially in very large markets, are finding (sometimes after only a short time as talkers) they are being eaten alive by their competition--especially in huge markets such as New York or Los Angeles. That seems to fit the four stations you mention rather well.

BTW, if two of the four stations sound as good as you say, I wonder if they weren't music stations before they were ever switched to talk; if so, their licensees/owners did the right thing putting the music back. There is entirely too much talk radio on the AM dial in most major cities today as it is. (How many AM talk stations can you hear in Paragould? I would guess quite a few, as you aren't that far from Jonesboro or even Little Rock.) An example of this was when one of the active rock FM stations in Cleveland was switched to talk a couple of weeks ago. Really! The AM radio dial in northeastern Ohio is already full to overflowing with talk/sports/news-talk stations (there is only one AM music station left, WWMK 1260, the Radio Disney station); now there is one (just one) FM talker where Cleveland's first hard-rock station used to be. I certainly hope the other 20+ local FM stations don't get ideas from this and start flipping right and left to talk, although, since Cleveland is the home of rock and roll (the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in the downtown section of the city), I don't think any more of the city's music stations will be abandoning their formats any time soon.

I wish some of these "Bible-Beater" stations down here would go back to music. Every one of 'em is an "old-timey" full gospel station, which means they scream & shout, & are about as subtle in their message as Little Boy was w/Hiroshima. Furthermore, if all THAT wasn't bad enuff, their chief engineer at most of them must be someone who knows nothing about modulation or broadcasting-Just turn 'er up as loud as she'll go.Gotta get The Word out there to all them there now Heatherns...

We have 3 African-American Gospel stations, 1 Southern-Gospel station, and two "blabber-mouth" stations that cover, maybe, 45,000 people.

One of the African-American Gospel stations WAS a good music station until they switched over without warning. The DJ's didn't have a clue what was about to happen until they were showed the door. That format switch caused quite an uproar in this town.

One of the other Gospel stations plays a couple hours of modern R&B music a day; but, I can't get into that, either.

All of the Gospel stations in my area don't have the best fidelity. Either they are very loud and distorted or they are so weak you can't hardly hear them.

I guess I'll have to start my own oldies AM station as soon as I win the lottery!

The AM and FM bands here are extremely crowded. The AM band is full of the nonsense that one associates with AM these days. So, hearing MUSIC was a pleasant surprise. Most of the stations around here have been on the air since before WWII, so they started off being music stations. With the exception of two NPR stations (Jonesboro and Memphis), I gave up on FM years ago. It's now full of Clear Channel classic rock stations or *what passes for country music these days* stations.

There is a small AM station about five miles from my apartment that is something like the "Bible-beater" stations in your area. Fortunately, it's not too powerful (1kW days, 0.5kW nights) and I am far enough away from its towers that it doesn't take over my radios at any time, although the signal is strong enough during the day that it shows up at two points on the digital tuner in my stereo system--560 and 1460 kHz, the latter being the station's FCC-assigned carrier frequency. As far as the station's programming is concerned, as I said, it is a 24/7 religious black gospel station that will stop at nothing to get its message out--including running the modulation level to 110 percent. No kidding--sometimes (make that most of the time) the modulation is so high the signal is terribly distorted as well. I thought there were limits as to the maximum modulation level allowed for AM radio; if there are, the stations where you are and the little one near me, in addition to countless other such stations in small towns and even suburbs of important cities that don't seem to care how they sound (as long as they are loud), should have been either cited for overmodulation or put off the air entirely, as their apparent disregard for their sound quality, let alone FCC rules, is appalling. IMO, it gives AM radio a heck of a bad name. Thank goodness for stations such as Toronto's CHWO AM 740, which still plays decent music and whose engineers know something about transmitting quality AM signals.

From what I'm hearing, the FCC don't bother AM stations anymore unless someone complains. And, most of the people around here that listen to those crappy sounding AM stations don't care what they sound like. As long as their radio rattles, that's all they care about.

Speaking of over the border blowtorches, didn't Radio Habana cuba tune one of their 100kw+ transmitters onto the AM broadcast band sometime back in the 80's? From what I remember someone telling me, it could be heard clearly up here in Ohio.

I think that did indeed happen. I heard that they did it because strong US stations were interfering with their stations and Cuba decided to give it right back.

I remember listening to KOY in Arizona in the 1960s on a 1950s Philco tube radio. They played classic rock/pop/oldies, but didn't call them oldies , because they were new back then!

Here in Hong Kong, average Chinese-language station, even if the music they choose isn't cruddy Canto-pop garbage, sounds like this:

talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, SONG, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, SONG, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, SONG, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk

...and the talking they do is mostly obnoxious, stupid stuff, delivered in a very "low class" style. There are exceptions, of course (maybe 2 DJs out of the bunch), but so few and far between that it isn't worth trying to find them.

The only two good stations here are a classical station on FM, and an [English-language] oldies/pop music station on AM (switches to simultaneously broadcasting on AM and FM at midnight, until about 6 a.m....). The BEST broadcast in Hong Kong is non-stop oldies/classic rock (zero talking, just song after song) from 4 to 6 a.m. on that FM frequency. The classical FM station is generally quite good, but I'm not always in the mood for classical, only sometimes.

To get those stations clearly, I spent a while researching, choosing and getting a good FM antenna, properly mounted/oriented, and then made a tunable square-loop AM antenna. The AM signal was quite strong already, but the better antenna still further improved the sound quality. I'd like to get a "Signal Sleuth" to further improve the FM sound, too, but the only one I found locally was over-priced, so I'm still looking.

Here in the mountains of western North Carolina, I can pick up WCBS 880 at night after the local talk radio shuts down at dusk. I can also get WLAC from Nashville, TN at 1510 on the dial. This is using my Fairbanks Morse model 8A from the late 1930's.

Lots of bible thumper stations around here, too. Several of them are FM, but still loud.

I have a length of wire hanging in my attic for the radio. AM comes alive at night around here. DXing is so fun!

I remember that, I think it was around 1100 kc, I think Radio Habana Cuba was "walking over" WWWE (now WTAM) out of Cleveland when I was listening to them here in Pittsburgh. Sometimes I like to listen to George Noory/Art Bell and Michael Savage on WKBN, 570 kc, out of Youngstown when the Pittsburgh Pirates pre-empt those shows (104.7 Mc, FM) and at night, I can always hear Cuba's "Radio Reloj" (Radio Clock) under WKBN's signal. There are times when Radio Reloj "walks over" WKBN as well.

That's interesting. I never had that kind of interference, even at night, when I would listen to WWWE back in the '70s-'80s in suburban Cleveland, and certainly never before then when 3WE (as the station was known in the '70s before they went to news-talk) was a music station. However, I guess that's because WWWE (now WTAM) is a local station to the Cleveland area; the signal anywhere in the metropolitan area is strong enough to override any interference from any other station on the frequency. But when you're listening from out of town, it can be and very often is anyone's guess what may come in with the signal you're trying to listen to.

I haven't listened to Youngstown's WKBN for years (I can hear it here fairly well most of the time), but was certainly unaware that any Cuban station could be heard underneath their 5kW signal. The Cuban station must be running a blockbuster signal if it can be heard in the Pittsburgh area, almost like the high-power unregulated "blowtorch" stations in Mexico, across the border from Phoenix, Arizona. However, the latter have made a shambles of the AM broadcast band in that area after sunset, except for a few news-talk and sports stations; at least in greater Pittsburgh, the interference to WKBN you're getting doesn't seem to be a constant problem. Again, it's likely due to the fact that you're listening to WKBN from outside their normal listening area. I honestly don't think that station's listeners in the greater Youngstown area have interference problems from any other signal; if they did, I'm sure the FCC would have heard about it long ago. I don't recall offhand how far Pittsburgh is from Youngstown, but if it's any appreciable distance, the AM radio signals from the latter may be and likely are far weaker in your area than they would be in the immediate Youngstown area.

While not nearly as common as long-distance AM reception, a similar condition can occur with FM radio under the proper conditions. I'm sure you may have heard FM repeaters or FM broadcast stations from other parts of Pennsylvania or even northeastern/eastern Ohio during temperature inversions and other unusual weather conditions; around here, 35 miles east of Cleveland and one mile (more or less) from the southern shore of Lake Erie, I often hear standard FM radio stations from Canada (southwestern Ontario), Detroit, Toledo, Ohio and even Youngstown and Erie, Pennsylvania, as well as the local FM stations from Cleveland. When the conditions are right, the FM radio dial in this area just lights up with stations, especially on my Zenith C845 and MJ1035 radios, both of which are designed for high-performance, long-distance reception even using simple antennas (a built-in antenna on the C845 and an old pair of TV rabbit ears on the MJ1035). I almost hate to think how many stations I'd get under summer/early fall propagation conditions if either of these sets were connected to a really good outdoor antenna--I'd probably have more signals coming in than I could count. No wonder so many 2-meter FM repeaters which are normally open access during fall and winter have to be put on tone-access mode (CTCSS or PL) in the summer.