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Technical Questions on HD-Only WFAS White Plains NY

G

Gregg.

I live about 25 miles from Hartsdale, where WFAS's transmitter is located. And I have HD reception in my car. So far, the 1230 signal cuts in and out for me. No signal in my garage but a good signal on the street. Yet when I was in a different part of NJ today, I also got no signal.

Can someone explain why an owner would choose to only broadcast in HD? Stations like WINS and sometimes WCBS do both. You get the HD signal if you are close enough to the transmitter. But you get analog if you only have an analog radio or are too distant. WINS and WCBS sound great when I hear them in AM HD. I think since the pandemic, WCBS is only in analog these days but I know when the HD signal is on, 880 and 1010 sound like FM stations.

To what advantage is it for WFAS to ONLY broadcast in HD? After all, most radios don't have HD reception.

And I guess there are now three HD-only AM stations? One in the DC area, one near Tampa, and now WFAS north of NYC?
 
Gregg. said:
Can someone explain why an owner would choose to only broadcast in HD?
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There is one, and only one reason I would advise using HD-only AM: A station has equal or better coverage of its market with an FM translator (or full-power FM simulcast), and the owner has interest in tinkering with the AM side. This does not fit WFAS, because they do not have any FM presence.

I don't have an explanation for why Cumulus would have gone HD-only on WFAS. One possibility is providing the best audio quality to the largest population, but even so WFAS is way too weak to cover much of the New York area.
 
Digital-only stations have better signal than HD or analog because all of the power goes into the digital signal. On HD stations, the digital signal is only allowed to be 10% of the analog to prevent interference. Also, digital-only stations don't use sidebands on adjacent channels that cause interference like on HD. Transmitting in both analog and digital uses more power than choosing one or the other. This article discusses digital AM more: All-Digital MA3 Is a Whole New Ballgame - Radio World
 
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The truth is: this is an experiement. I think they're trying to see if they can provide a listenable signal in an area where a 1,000 watt station would otherwise be hard to hear. I have no idea if it will work. I still think all-digital AM is best left to stations that want to broadcast a music format. But what do I know. I hope this works out for them.
 
Does not come through in Southeastern Nassau. Just a load of hash and once in a while I see a teaser of the HD indicator but it’s not lit up in amber. In my car, you see the HD indicator in gray when HD is detected, but it lights up amber when a signal of sufficient strength triggers digital mode.

1010 WINS triggers HD just fine during daylight hours, but it’s finicky after sundown.
 
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djl said:
Does not come through in Southeastern Nassau. Just a load of hash and once in a while I see a teaser of the HD indicator but it’s not lit up in amber. In my car, you see the HD indicator in gray when HD is detected, but it lights up amber when a signal of sufficient strength triggers digital mode.

1010 WINS triggers HD just fine during daylight hours, but it’s finicky after sundown.
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Just curious about you vehicle HD radio; factory and after the market installation; I want HD on my next vehicle and reading every thing I can about it; in my area (Tampa/St. Pete area) there is one HD only AM station, but on my Sangean HD/AM/FM radio the 1470 HD doesn't come in all that well unless I'm within about 10 miles of their tower, during the day and at night; like you experience with WINS, the HD reception is maybe 5 miles tops, at least on my Sangean, don't know if vehicle HD radios would caption the HD any better.
 
I drive a 2017 Mazda CX-5 factory installed. I’m close to 50 miles from WINS (most of the NYC AM stations transmit from New Jersey - 10 Mike’s west of Manhattan). It uses the standard shark fin antenna.

I’m approximately 35 miles from the Empire State Building where the NYC FM stations transmit from. If I go 2 or 3 miles East into Suffolk County, the HD FM drops off, so in a nutshell, essentially with the standard antenna I’m good for 40 miles of HD FM.

It’s totally worth it for the extra stations and the better audio quality. It’s such a shame the audio manufacturers stopped adding HD into home audio receivers. I know indoor HD FM is weak but I have a Radio Shack directional FM only antenna in my attic aimed between the Empire State Building and 1 World Trade Center.
 
I would use a digital-only AM station as an STL with which to feed audio to FM translators.
 
Ai4i said:
I would use a digital-only AM station as an STL with which to feed audio to FM translators.
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These stations are on the broadcast band for a reason. They're supposed to be "broad" casting -- as in, reaching a broad audience -- not using them as their own private backend for their engineering needs.

Same goes for HD subchannels. The FCC should be discouraging that type of usage. There are better ways to get a signal to the transmitter. Use the public signals to serve the public.
 
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Theater of My Mind said:
These stations are on the broadcast band for a reason. They're supposed to be "broad" casting -- as in, reaching a broad audience -- not using them as their own private backend for their engineering needs.

Same goes for HD subchannels. The FCC should be discouraging that type of usage. There are better ways to get a signal to the transmitter. Use the public signals to serve the public.
Click to expand...

From what I can tell, it is perfectly permissible under current rules to use a digital-only AM station to directly feed a translator, assuming the translator meets the usual coverage requirements for the parent AM station.
 
djl said:
I drive a 2017 Mazda CX-5 factory installed. I’m close to 50 miles from WINS (most of the NYC AM stations transmit from New Jersey - 10 Mike’s west of Manhattan). It uses the standard shark fin antenna.

I’m approximately 35 miles from the Empire State Building where the NYC FM stations transmit from. If I go 2 or 3 miles East into Suffolk County, the HD FM drops off, so in a nutshell, essentially with the standard antenna I’m good for 40 miles of HD FM.

It’s totally worth it for the extra stations and the better audio quality. It’s such a shame the audio manufacturers stopped adding HD into home audio receivers. I know indoor HD FM is weak but I have a Radio Shack directional FM only antenna in my attic aimed between the Empire State Building and 1 World Trade Center.
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Thank You for all the details; I'm hoping that by the end of this year or NLT spring next year to have a vehicle with factory HD radio. I have the Sangean HDR-16 and the HD on the fm bands gives me more options and that's good when I'm in an area where there is no Wi-Fi or slow WiFi where streaming isn't good. Except for last year, I attend a reunion for a week, once a year in different locations and in 2018; the WiFi was out in most of the hotel complex, but with the radio I managed to pick up for some additional music.

Up until local WMGG (Tampa/Egypt Lake) started their digital transmissions earlier this year I had never been successful in listening to AM HD; in the last four months of 2019; I was in Harrisonburg,VA three nights and WCBS 880 and 890 WLS HD logo's keep blinking and on WCBS, I felt sure it was about to lock in, but never did! Then a night in Richmond, VA and the same thing with WCBS, the HD never locked in and WLS 890 was totally absent, on the HD scene.

A week in Charleston, SC in late August 2019 and there was interference from two stations on 880 (Miami and Cuba) that kept the WCBS 880 from locking in. (In Charleston, I did try WINS 1010, but I believe Charleston, S.C. longitude is too far west to get a lock on 1010.). The Miami 880 at that time had a tighter directional null up the coast toward NYC, but I believe they were not using their nighttime null).

This year, late August, I may be in Warwick, RI for a week and I'm hoping that I will be able to get both WCBS and WINS in HD.........any other suggestions from that location??

Again, thank you for all the info.......certainly better and more accurate than the official "HD site" and/or Wikipedia!! 😀
 
A reminder about the obsolete MA1 hybrid system that WCBS, WLS, etc. use or used - because it's actually IBAC (in-band, adjacent-channel) not IBOC (in-bad, on-channel), when you're trying to DX it, it's not enough to be free of interference on the station's analog channel. In order to decode WCBS, you need its digital carriers (at lower power) to overcome anything else on 870 and 890 as well. That's probably why you were getting the HD light to come on for both WCBS and WLS but not decoding audio. If you're getting both in analog, you won't get either in digital, because WLS' analog on 890 is stomping on WCBS' digital data and vice versa.
 
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fybush said:
A reminder about the obsolete MA1 hybrid system that WCBS, WLS, etc. use or used - because it's actually IBAC (in-band, adjacent-channel) not IBOC (in-bad, on-channel), when you're trying to DX it, it's not enough to be free of interference on the station's analog channel. In order to decode WCBS, you need its digital carriers (at lower power) to overcome anything else on 870 and 890 as well. That's probably why you were getting the HD light to come on for both WCBS and WLS but not decoding audio. If you're getting both in analog, you won't get either in digital, because WLS' analog on 890 is stomping on WCBS' digital data and vice versa.
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They need to make skywave illegal.

(Somebody will probably think I am serious)
 
KeithE4 said:
When skywave is outlawed, only outlaws will have skywave.

(Insert CB radio joke here.)
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You made me remember C W McCall's "Convoy" and I will not forgive you for it!
 
Theater of My Mind said:
These stations are on the broadcast band for a reason. They're supposed to be "broad" casting -- as in, reaching a broad audience -- not using them as their own private backend for their engineering needs.
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Then the same could have been said for FM back in the 50's. The difference is; there are a lot more HD radios in the market that can hear an AM-MA3 station today, than there were FM radios back in the day.
Theater of My Mind said:
Same goes for HD subchannels. The FCC should be discouraging that type of usage. There are better ways to get a signal to the transmitter. Use the public signals to serve the public.
Click to expand...
The FCC doesn't regulate programming, nor who listens to a station. As long as the licensee isn't transmitting obscene content, or is in other violation related to content.
 
If I set the rules, the entire broadcast industry would be out for my throat:
An FM translator must run the master station intact; main channel and all HD subchannels and SCAs.
Only the RBDS and PAD channels would be allowed to identify the translator in addition to the master station.
 
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