I remember as a boy I received a clock radio for Christmas. I grew up in Chicago and at night I would listen to AM stations from around the country. It seemed hearing stations West of me was always difficult with KOA in Denver being the furthest West. I still try to catch DX on the AM dial in my car. Last winter driving from Northern Michigan southbound at about 0500 I was listening to some info commercial that sounded local. It was out of Atlanta.
I got a 2000 Buick LaSabre. The radio in that thing is like a tractor beam. So is my 05 Toyota with a external factory antenna.
I got a 2000 Buick LaSabre. The radio in that thing is like a tractor beam. So is my 05 Toyota with a external factory antenna.
Ironically, AM is better for music now than it was the past. Today's commercial music is more compressed, bandwith limited - because this way it can be compressed even more - and it works fine on mono because popular "smart speakers" are mono, even premium ones. I've run a few 78 rpm recordings from the '30 trough a LUFS meter and the 78rpm recording has a lower index than modern pop music. It would need to be compressed more to get into an "acceptable" range for today's music services and broadcast.
There's 'music' in the short wave bands too: squeeks, thumbings, rollers, clankins, sissers, birds, whales, magpies, what not.
Hypnotic, tranqualising, sounds from eons gone.
And some rare regular radio stations, discussions, contemporain music, all plunged in noise and static cracks. Sentiment...
Hypnotic, tranqualising, sounds from eons gone.
And some rare regular radio stations, discussions, contemporain music, all plunged in noise and static cracks. Sentiment...
In the 1960's, from Cleveland we listened to the local stations like WIXY-1260 and WHK-1300, but were also able to pull in the Indianapolis and Ft. Wayne (WOWO), Detroit, Pittsburgh, NY, Chicago and of course CKLW. Of course baseball was great on AM radio, as was football on Sundays when the NFL blackouts prevented us from viewing our beloved Browns on Channel 8.
I don't know any of my peers who listened to WSM, but wife and I listen to "Willie's Roadhouse" on Sirius!
I don't know any of my peers who listened to WSM, but wife and I listen to "Willie's Roadhouse" on Sirius!
That's interesting and I guess geography has a lot to do with it. Over the last 30 years I only listened to AM for the BBC sports channel in the car and as soon as that went DAB have had no reason to try AM again.
For years we only had one national LW station left on 198kHz. The official reason for stopping that one was that no one knew how to build replacement tubes for the 500kW transmitter.
I frequently listen to Radio Caroline on a 1950's AM radio. There is no practical way to receive British FM broadcast stations here, but medium wave AM works fine.
Early adopters of DAB can throw away their radios or put them in a museum, because the broadcasters have switched from DAB to DAB+.
Early adopters of DAB can throw away their radios or put them in a museum, because the broadcasters have switched from DAB to DAB+.
For day time short wave reception, a proper antenna and receiver combination is useful.
Night, not so bad, in remote areas we listened to Radio Ceylon, the nearest MW transmitter was 100 km away, and their choice of content was not to our taste.
Right next to it was VoA, 11792 and 11800 kHz.
Ah, childhood memories...
Night, not so bad, in remote areas we listened to Radio Ceylon, the nearest MW transmitter was 100 km away, and their choice of content was not to our taste.
Right next to it was VoA, 11792 and 11800 kHz.
Ah, childhood memories...
You are still on line, in contact with us, so I would say you are not a hermit.
If you are into short wave, find a good HF receiver for ham monitor use, many controls. Or military surplus.
Here they have shifted to VHF, UHF and satellite, HF gear was scrapped and I did not know about it.
Maybe from the ship scrap yards at Alang, some day.
If you are into short wave, find a good HF receiver for ham monitor use, many controls. Or military surplus.
Here they have shifted to VHF, UHF and satellite, HF gear was scrapped and I did not know about it.
Maybe from the ship scrap yards at Alang, some day.
The first radio I constructed was in the mid 1950s, tube receivers with anything I could get my hands on. Favorite in the early years was a 0V1 with the 75 triode. As solar activity was high, the large input coil was enough to pick up signals. The headphone was so loud that the neighbors could hear it... Jazz hour with VOA Willis Conover, so popular in the former USSR that the jammers were suspended. After that, multi-tube superhets, PP-EL84 UL amps etc. and of course the famous Radio Luxemburg, with live jazz from Acker Bilk, Sunday evenings. Already then it was clear that with proper designs, quality of AM could be "good enough" even for music - especially with synchronous detectors. Back then, loudspeakers were sensitive enough to use as mike, and my first "eavesdropping" TX was with a 6D6, running on a 6V battery for both heater and Va. Coverage a few 10s of meters, but in the 1950s, good enough ;-)
Here in Panama, AM continues but due to high interference levels has a limited range. Shortwave in the tropics only is active during the dark hours, daytime absorption is so high that only "almost" local groundwave transmissions can be heard, for instance15770 KHz from Florida.
Here in Panama, AM continues but due to high interference levels has a limited range. Shortwave in the tropics only is active during the dark hours, daytime absorption is so high that only "almost" local groundwave transmissions can be heard, for instance15770 KHz from Florida.
For some reason I was such a tester of the first batches of "digital radio". Nothing changed on the broadcast side when the switch was done from DAB to DAB+ as it is is only a software change but radios could not be updated. That was error by design and a first disappointment besides the quite meagre covering with only a few channels broadcasting. Then it turned out to be limited in bandwidth for advertisement purposes and to be able to have more channels. So 96 and 128 kbit it was generally instead of the promised and technically possible 320 kbit. If you're lucky you may find a channel in 192 kbit. At last it is practically unusable in cars which was one of the advertised features. To have people switch over to DAB+ it was decided to limit FM transmitting power (slogan was: 10 times more power needed = not green) so now we have both FM and DAB+ with limited reception. The nice thing of DAB+ is that it is noise free if one has reception
Progress!And gone were my tuners, it makes no sense to get annoyed by such stuff. Many things that used to be a service to a people (music with news and weather/traffic info) have turned to be revenue demanding services with advertisements etc. So all media lean heavily on companies trying to sell stuff. Whether it is the web, radio, magazines, television or social media... they all seem to want to influence the user to spend money (even worse is influencing belief or suggestive and colored political stuff). Maybe a number of those users do not need all that influencing and just want to be neutrally informed with some entertainment?
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Back in the day, in my rural town in the middle of the Argentine Pampas, I would nightly listen to regular AM MW brodcast signals from USA, specially WGBS in Florida, using a 40 meter long wire stretched East-West so pickup lobe went North-South, perfect to pick Caribbean area radios.
It fed either a former British Lancaster WW2 bomber radio or, surprisingly, a standard Philco Ford car radio which was very selective and sensitive.
Again: it was plain vanilla AM broadcast band, not shortwave.
Not sure even today how it reached 7000 km away, certainly not hopping up and down, so it must have been some kind of ground wave, hugging Earth curvature.
That, or Erth is flat after all
I could NOT do the same in Buenos Aires, just 160 km away, tons of local RF junk.
FWIW I still have a very similar Cargo Ship multiband receiver but haven´t even plugged it in for some 20-30 years.
One of these days ......
Yea,I know, it´s somewhat dusty.
It fed either a former British Lancaster WW2 bomber radio or, surprisingly, a standard Philco Ford car radio which was very selective and sensitive.
Again: it was plain vanilla AM broadcast band, not shortwave.
Not sure even today how it reached 7000 km away, certainly not hopping up and down, so it must have been some kind of ground wave, hugging Earth curvature.
That, or Erth is flat after all
I could NOT do the same in Buenos Aires, just 160 km away, tons of local RF junk.
FWIW I still have a very similar Cargo Ship multiband receiver but haven´t even plugged it in for some 20-30 years.
One of these days ......
Yea,I know, it´s somewhat dusty.
We lived in Bay Village in the late '60s and I had a radio in my bedroom, almost certainly AM. I remember listening to WKYC, which had great popular music. I probably developed my interests in music back then. It was the golden era of call-ins, contests and prizes.
Without AM, where will we get the shipping forecast?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast
Examples here for those who have never heard it
On holiday we all had to stop what we were doing and listen when it was on. Never found out if my dad knew what it meant, or where we were on the shipping map
Brian
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast
Examples here for those who have never heard it
On holiday we all had to stop what we were doing and listen when it was on. Never found out if my dad knew what it meant, or where we were on the shipping map
Brian
In the early 1960s I had constructed a MW superhet with the 7360 beam deflection tube as mixer. Its (noise) Req was low enough to omit an RF preamp and the input tuned BPF allowed to receive many US MW stations after midnight, as in Europe it was customary to shut down transmitters and start them up at 6 AM. Back then I had nothing to measure IP3 etc. but the national MW transmitters of 100 KW each were at some 40 Km distance and over wet, flat land produced huge signals that overloaded the input circuits of most radios.
SW was received with "all triode" converters as back then, there was no other way to make receivers sensitive enough to show the background noise when connecting an antenna.
Here in Panama, before MW was switched off in Europe, the presence of EU MW showed on the SDR but copying, impossible as in many countries in the region MW stations are operated 24/7. The exception, LW stations at 171 and 252 KHz. When activity of electric storms is low enough, both can be copied. Even the reception of DCF77 would be useful for a part of the night. As for instance in Panama past hurricanes even disabled the cellular system, I think MW should be maintained at a strategic location, at least for national emergencies.
SW was received with "all triode" converters as back then, there was no other way to make receivers sensitive enough to show the background noise when connecting an antenna.
Here in Panama, before MW was switched off in Europe, the presence of EU MW showed on the SDR but copying, impossible as in many countries in the region MW stations are operated 24/7. The exception, LW stations at 171 and 252 KHz. When activity of electric storms is low enough, both can be copied. Even the reception of DCF77 would be useful for a part of the night. As for instance in Panama past hurricanes even disabled the cellular system, I think MW should be maintained at a strategic location, at least for national emergencies.
Good that you mention it, brings up good memories from the 60's. "Luxy" as we called it came in on a 6-transistor pocket radio after 10 PM, when the propagation was better (related to some solar activity in the ionosphere, or lack of it). I did not care about sound quality and occasional fading. The distance from my place is nearly 1000 km (600 miles).Thanks to Radio Luxembourg on AM I discovered rock’n roll. Ah …. Memories. These days I never listen to radio. Nor do I watch TV…. And ignore all social media. Play music only from my locally stored collection. Maybe I’ve become a hermit?
Sometimes as a kid I'd sit in my father's VW in the driveway to listen to music. For some reason I thought the little Bendix AM radio "sounded better" and I'd thought I'd tracked it to the IF strip being different than 455 kHz. One thing I did was adjust the tuner slightly "off center" which brought up the highs and I thought made it sound better.
I've never technically figured out why tuning a station slightly off center made it sound better - does anyone here know what was happening? That technique seems to work best on the Bendix "Sapphire IV" too; other radios didnt give that effect, or, as nicely.
Radio Lux was about 1500 km from where I lived. No problem receiving it up here on this old thing:
The radio I had was my mom's Radionette Kurer, a very popular AM radio in the 50's'. It had four tubes, and could run on mains AC voltages from 110 to 230 V, or even a custom 90V battery.
The radio I had was my mom's Radionette Kurer, a very popular AM radio in the 50's'. It had four tubes, and could run on mains AC voltages from 110 to 230 V, or even a custom 90V battery.