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Post by Boomer on Nov 16, 2019 16:43:23 GMT
Hi Y'all, let's keep truckin'. As we know, HD radio MA3 mode is being proposed for the AM band, which is a completely digital signal, with no conventional analog component. The folks at Radio Survivor are on this, and Radio Survivor Paul wrote what I think is a no nonsense article about it: www.radiosurvivor.com/2019/11/07/can-we-save-am-radio-by-killing-it-considering-all-digital-am-radio/It has a graphic with humor that's probably familiar to radio hobbyists, a gun being pointed at a Superadio 3 style radio, which is analog only. Here's Radio Survivor's podcast, which gives some ideas about the possibility about the approval of all digital on the AM band, as well as a new commercial FM licensing window that is to be opened, and a milestone for college radio. www.radiosurvivor.com/2019/11/13/podcast-219-the-next-chance-to-get-an-fm-station-license-a-college-station-60th-all-digital-am/Boomer |
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Post by thelegacy on Nov 17, 2019 8:18:36 GMT
Very cool stuff from radio survivor.
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Post by mark on Nov 17, 2019 19:17:57 GMT
I agree with the article. The first one especially. But it's voluntary and the regular AM band is still there. As for hobbiests the noise screws us up too. Listen to this...typical of AM listening.
And it's like this in every house. How do you fix it? All the electrical interference is a killer for all weak stations and even the strong stations can't get through.
I can tell you the REAL fix for AM....Turn of the power!!
Here's another....watch what happens when he turns it to AM....and he is outside!
But moving it all to FM isn't the answer. You just don't have room and there's no space left without expanding the FM band.
Maybe the satire is right to "kill it" or turn of the power when you want to listen.
Legacy, that range you are getting is OUTSIDE and a LONG way from power at the ocean. Try even half a mile in someones house.
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Post by Boomer on Nov 17, 2019 23:42:17 GMT
Cool demos of the GE Superadio III, and it does tune in really tight on AM to stations for an analog radio. AM narrow has a problem though on mine, it's difficult to land the tuner on a station, especially at the higher end of the dial, it always wants to go to one or two signals above or below, when you let go of the tuning knob.
I'm assuming that the tuner needs to be cleaned, it's like extreme backlash, so I tune it in wide mode then it locks in, like the guy in the second video appeared to be doing on AM. I'll have to find out more and hack into my radio with some cleaner.
One thing that really works for AM reception is a longwire antenna out in the yard, yes, as was done in the early days of radio. In those times radio stations ran low power and receivers were low sensitivity, tech and circuit design weren't too advanced. The longwire could pick up more of the electromagnetic fields, so even a cat's whisker crystal radio could pick up stations.
It's like we're going back again, now signals are strong, radios pick up better, but there's more interference in homes. It's surprising how much a longwire can do, just getting an antenna outside and through some trees, any wire you have.
I noticed that the first guy got dead carriers at different places on the dial, I get those too, usually from computers.
It can be tough on transmitters with an antenna in the home, cars are where those shine and get long range. Homes might be a job for carrier current, transmitting by power line, that puts signals in homes and not in open spaces well at all, so it's like the opposite of a 3 meter antenna station.
Boomer
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Post by mark on Nov 18, 2019 5:40:41 GMT
A little off topic but for what I was illustrating any if the supers or other radio could have worked but it's the supers that the reviewers do AM tests. In those super 3s the tuning is done by a pot similar to a volume control and it gets oxidized or dirty and it gets noisy and the sound skips and drops out same as a volume does. You have to open it up and spray it with alcohol cleaner and quickly move it up and down the dial to restore it to proper working and you won't have trouble latching on to stations. The others had old fashion air tuning caps. But you can see especially in the second video how bad it is on AM and he was even outside, and as I saw using batteries!
But Getting back to the article there's 3 possibilities to revitalize AM
1) The FCC enforce their own rules on things not causing interference including the A/C power supply. It used to not be like this so what changed with the power. They know how it is. I'm sure the FCC people can turn on a radio in their house and hear what's wrong.
2) You want to listen to AM and DX...turn off the power in your house and presto... the noise across the band is gone!
3) As the satire shows to illustrate the article...kill it!
And the long wire won't work if you have the radio plugged into A/C. The A/C line induces the noise directly into the radio circuitry. Oh, and a 4th thing would be to instead of going digital change the band from AM to FM instead of going digital but everyone would need a new radio with that too.
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Post by thelegacy on Nov 19, 2019 6:21:38 GMT
When I was at the ocean away from all the power lines you could hear my station really nice for a very long distance specially when using the am advantage loop.
in a lot of areas here in Deltaville Virginia the power line noise is very low but there are certain areas where it spikes and you can definitely tell those areas.
Listening to my station inside of a house the range will drop considerably because yes you do here noise caused by several different factors. A lot of them are the power supplies four different devices refrigerators and those new energy-saving light bulbs have a lot to do with it.
Moving forward on the other forum I have found out that M83 goes further than analog because it has a sensitivity of 0.5 MV which is pretty good. And it seems that the ma3 format was invented by a different company. I'm still trying to find out if there is a discount early adopters and rather or not they would Grant a part 15 station a license to use the encoder if a open source encoder is not available.
I will keep digging into this a little deeper to find out how the tests are but I'm so far finding it very interesting.
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