Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodzilla
i posted a thread about it when it happened here in Halifax...as you say we did pick up a few new fm stations,which for the most part are a bit more relevant,to me at least...and really other than enthusiast types dealing with antiques,pretty much anyone with a radio these days has FM capabilites.
AM going away here has really been a non issue..most people didn't even notice...just a little while ago,a GF of mine was telling me how the radio didnt seem to work in her classic car anymore,she insisted that it used too but that it must have broken somehow...she doesn't drive the car regularly and didn't realize that there was just nothing for it to pick up anymore...!
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Aren't there other AM radio stations within 24/7 listening range of Nova Scotia? I somehow cannot believe that the AM radio dial in your area is now 99.999 percent dead air since all but one of their AM stations has gone silent. Is Nova Scotia that far away from any other major city in Canada that stations from other parts of the country are not heard during the day? At night, 50kW stations from the U. S. East Coast should come in to the Halifax area like gangbusters as that city, not to mention the province of Nova Scotia itself, are not that far away from the US border. I would think, for example, that Toronto's CFZM 740 -- which runs 50kW with a signal pattern beamed at the city and also the northeastern US -- could be heard in Halifax as well, not to mention other 50kW stations across the border in New England and the NE United States (Hartford, Connecticut's WTIC, Buffalo, New York's WKBW, et al).
Your girlfriend's car radio must have antenna problems, as she should be hearing
some nearby stations, as I mentioned. Perhaps the antenna leadin broke off at the base; this often happens in winter during a hard freeze, when water gets into the antenna base, freezes, and breaks an insulator, resulting in the antenna leadin either shorting to the base or the center conductor breaking off at the point where it connects to the antenna, not to mention poor or no connections at the other end of the cable that plugs into the radio's antenna socket; any one of these conditions will kill all reception. Remember, with car radios, the antenna is extremely important; without it, the radio simply will not work at all, unless you are within shouting distance -- literally -- of a local station, and even then there is no guarantee you will hear anything because the interior of any vehicle is just about the poorest place there is for any kind of radio reception.
Please note that the foregoing applies to today's embedded windshield auto radio antennas as well as the older fender-mounted ones. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that a car radio
will not operate at all without an antenna connected to it. The leadin cable alone won't work as an antenna because it is shielded; again, unless you are in an incredibly strong signal area, trying to use only the leadin cable without the actual antenna won't work worth a plugged nickel.