badjef said:
I was proudly a "Kahn-man". It would stay in stereo long after C-QuAM was out. With no
platform motion.
This is only true because the vast majority of Kahn-capable multi-system receivers were
of the "forced stereo" design, which would receive any signal under any condition in
"stereo" -- even on stations that are not transmitting AM Stereo at all.
I have one of the rare Sansui TU-S77AMX multi-system tuners with automatic pilot tone
detection of all four systems (Magnavox, Kahn, Motorola, and Harris) and automatic
mono/stereo switching, and when it attempts to decode a Kahn signal, it is just as touchy
about dropping out to mono as it is with C-Quam signals. And thanks to its synchronous
detector, when the synchronous PLL can't lock onto the signal, it mutes the audio
completely, making it useless for DXing or any kind of weak signal reception.
But Leonard Kahn may have had the last laugh, because while there is no C-Quam in
New York City anymore -- the closest stations are WCTC in NJ and WAXB (ex-WREF)
in CT -- 1600 WWRL is transmitting Kahn "POWER-side", complete with the 15 Hz
Kahn AM Stereo pilot tone. The Sansui tuner decodes this as if it was a stereo signal, and
the audio comes out of the left channel much louder than in the right channel -- quite
appropriate for a liberal talk station.