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Areas with No Radio reception

V

vibe

Here in the Northeast we know that whereever we go, there will be a number of stations to listen to. About halfway between Brattleboro and Stratton Mtn, I was surprised to find that only one station WBZ came in while on seek. I remember camping in Big Bend Natl Park in the 70's and there was no AM radio reception whatsoever and I think just one FM and that was manually tuning the radio. That was during the day, of course.
We talk about all the stations we HAVE received but are there areas of the U.S. (or the world) that are so remote that nothing comes in during the day? I'm curious and would like to hear about them and others may too. Thanks.
 
As far as the Big Bend - I remember having a few AM's. Surprisingly, that 550 in Midland, which is highly directional was one of them.
 
I know this is way off the mark, but I was in a place called Fort Portal in western Uganda about 2 years ago and there was almost no AM reception AT NIGHT. I faintly picked up one intermittent signal on one frequency (dance music of all things) - but couldn't ID it. There were 3 or 4 translators of national FM signals but nothing on AM - just silence. It's the only time I've experienced that.

Of course, SW was just crackling with lots of signals - including VOA and BBC, which you can't get in the US (anymore).....
 
Driving on the Trans-Canada Highway in Eastern British Columbia and on the Coquihalla Highways in western British Columbia, you will encounter stretches of highway with NO stations at all...not even the faintest of signals....when you drive from the town of field, British Columbia, into Alberta, as so0n as fields's 40 watt relay of cbc radio 1 fades out (860 am) It may be a while before you can hear a signal...at least until you get to the town of Lake Louise where there are a few very low powered FM stations....you could always try to get the Calgary AM stations which can be heard in Lake Louise with a weak signal, but between there and Field, it would be interesting to see how long the gap is in terms of time between when you can no longer hear the Calgary AM's and when 860 from Field comes in. Last time I was on the Coquihalla highway, back in 91, 80% of the highway had no signals at all on either band, only the 2 ends of the highway had any signals at all, and it was one or 2 at each end. I know that the highway between Banff and Jasper is pretty much without any radio reception, maybe a faint signal here and there in some spots.
 
Continuing w/Vibes, thought, I'm curious about Nevada N of Las Vegas, or in/around Death Valley, or Montana or Wyoming or Washington/Oregon/Idaho, or the U.P. in Michigan.

Who's on there?
 
mimo said:
signal...at least until you get to the town of Lake Louise where there are a few very low powered FM stations....you could always try to get the Calgary AM stations which can be heard in Lake Louise with
Click to expand...

I had forgotten that area - I stayed in Lake Louise years before there were any LPFM's - I had two or three very faint AM's on an old Radio Shack tuned RF portable I had modified with a large ferrite rod antenna.
 
tjthedj said:
Continuing w/Vibes, thought, I'm curious about Nevada N of Las Vegas, or in/around Death Valley, or Montana or Wyoming or Washington/Oregon/Idaho, or the U.P. in Michigan.
Click to expand...

The UP of MI is served by quite a few local stations, 580 from Canada is a blowtorch up there - and at that latitude, there is usually a small degree of skywave and the Chicago 50 kW monsters fade in and out.
 
tjthedj said:
Continuing w/Vibes, thought, I'm curious about Nevada N of Las Vegas, or in/around Death Valley, or Montana or Wyoming or Washington/Oregon/Idaho, or the U.P. in Michigan.

Who's on there?
Click to expand...

You can get many Las Vegas AM stations in Death Valley and throughout southern NV. FMers too - until you go too deep in the valleys. Most of Wyoming has some AM signal coverage, be it from KTWO (central), KOA (SE), KSL (SW), or locals. Many parts of the intermountain west have no FM reception, but the AM signals actually penetrate the terrain better. In some places, there's no FM so you have to resort to AM for a while (although non radio geeks will probably pop in a CD or listen to MP3s). ;)
 
vibe said:
We talk about all the stations we HAVE received but are there areas of the U.S. (or the world) that are so remote that nothing comes in during the day?
Click to expand...

Make the drive on US 89 from Grand Canyon to Page Arizona. You'll go for miles with just KGHR, a Navajo Nation langauge non-com from Tuba City.
 
rbrucecarter5 said:
tjthedj said:
Continuing w/Vibes, thought, I'm curious about Nevada N of Las Vegas, or in/around Death Valley, or Montana or Wyoming or Washington/Oregon/Idaho, or the U.P. in Michigan.
Click to expand...

The UP of MI is served by quite a few local stations, 580 from Canada is a blowtorch up there - and at that latitude, there is usually a small degree of skywave and the Chicago 50 kW monsters fade in and out.
Click to expand...

As far as the Great Lakes area goes, I've heard that the Lake Superior shore between Duluth and Thunder Bay is pretty sparse radio-wise...FM between the two cities supposedly consists of little besides Minnesota Public Radio translators, and AM is limited due to poor ground conductivity (due to the iron-rich soil I guess?).
 
We vacationed in a place called Fremont, Michigan (50 or so miles north of Grand Rapids) and on my el-cheapo transistor radio I could get nothing but local WSHN on 1550 on AM during the daytime (late 60s). A little better radio and there were lots of signals, but most on the weak side. I listened mostly to either WOKY (at teh time top 40 from Milwaukee), or WGRD (then AM 1410) Grand Rapids. At night everything came alive, including CKLW blasting in (at home in Ohio we were ,ostly excluded from CKLW's night pattern).
 
I was in Tok, AK in late evening and there was no reception of any kind on AM or FM. I was once driving on Hwy 12 between Washington and Montana and there was a stretch where there was no daytime reception until I connected a 16db booster. This enabled me to hear a brand new station in Missoula. If I didn't have the booster AND the station wasn't on the air yet, I would have been out of luck because my tape deck gave out at the same time. Any place where there's a mountain range has pretty sparse daytime reception.
 
Extreme NW Washington, south of Cape Flattery and NOrth of Forks -- No reception on a car radio and no cell phone reception.

Tom S
 
As Mimo mentioned earlier, the stretch between Revelstoke BC and Golden BC on the Trans-Canada has absolutely no signal on AM (daytime) and barely audible reception on FM from a couple of CBC translators out in the sticks, but even they are spotty. Once you get past Golden going East, the Calgary 50,000W AM'ers (CFFR 660, CHQR 770, etc) start coming in faintly. Going west from Revelstoke, a few stations from the Okanogan Valley (Salmon Arm,Vernon,Kelowna) start coming in after 40-50 miles.

Another area where reception is spotty is on US Hwy. 50 between Austin and Eureka, Nevada. Not much on AM (KBOI, KALL, KSL, KKOH, and a few others are faint) and FM is basically blank except for a couple weak translators and a low power station from Ely.
 
One area with no, or very little reception is Cherokee, NC. Radio-locator shows some Knoxville, TN stations, but they are blocked by the mountain range. When I visited Cherokee a couple of months ago, the only thing I could pick up (barely) was a translator for some small town country station from elsewhere in NC.
 
The area of Cass, West Virginia, is just south of a radio telescope observatory, and while there were very few AMs and FMs, there is NO cell coverage, due to the protection for the radio-telescope. I remember a vacation trip to Cass where we rode up a mountain on an old logging railroad, and were informed to turn off our cell-phones, because there was no signal anyway, and the phones would go dead as they turned up to high power trying to contact a site, which there weren't any of.

anyone know the 'zact location of the radio telescope?
 
The NRAO radio telescopes are located maybe 10 miles north of the Cass Scenic Railroad on WV 22 in beautiful Green Bank, WV. They are definitely a tourist draw in their own right, with a wonderful visitor's center and guided and self tours. It you went to Cass, and missed NRAO, it is a shame. Yes, there is a "radio quiet" zone imposed for miles around the telescopes. NRAO has even been known to confiscate leaky microwave ovens (they repair or replace them without charge) in communities around the site. But there is one local radio station, WVMR 1370 AM broadcasting from the big city of Frost WV, just a few miles from Cass and Green Bank. FM, TV and especially microwave signals are a no-no, though there are a number of weak FM & TV signals available from Roanoke VA and Bluefield WV--kind of makes you wonder. Cellular service is also restricted, but is available in nearby Marlinton and Snowshoe. WVMR is operated by a communications cooperative, in other words it is a non-commerical. I was a volunteer there for several years, not a pleasant experience, but we won't get into that.....
 
Nevada, north of LV on I-95, is dead. You get a few translators around Beatty, but only immediately in town. and hardly anything in the afternoon on AM, no FM's until you come back in to the passes on the CA side (Hwy 168 towards Big Pine)...and KRHV and KIBS are hit and miss until you climb back up onto the second pass....


Even with the high elevations.

BUT, if you go north 130 miles, on a good day, you'll hear KFTZ (Idaho Falls) coming in under KATM (Modesto, CA) on the eastern slopes of the sierra's coming down Hwy 88 at Woodfords, CA.

That's always a fun DX to pull when I have a co-worker with me...Listening to country music fading in/out and boom! an ID for Idaho Falls' Hit Music Station....

I love my F-250's stock radio. You never know what you'll get.
 
sacriver said:
BUT, if you go north 130 miles, on a good day, you'll hear KFTZ (Idaho Falls) coming in under KATM (Modesto, CA) on the eastern slopes of the sierra's coming down Hwy 88 at Woodfords, CA.

That's always a fun DX to pull when I have a co-worker with me...Listening to country music fading in/out and boom! an ID for Idaho Falls' Hit Music Station....
Click to expand...

That reminds of a little vacation I took a few months ago in which I stopped at a restaurant near Dyersburg, TN and they were playing an AC station whose legal ID really surprised me... WRIK Metropolis, Illinois!!
 
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