I was also recently thinking about the future of TIS stations, which are still exclusively on AM. Maybe it's a moot point because so many of them are under-utilized. The one in my town is still playing an announcement about a winter storm that happened three years ago. And there's one in L.A. that has been playing a loop of Siri saying "Today is a great day, testing, testing, testing" for at least a year now.
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Fewer cars with AM radios...
- Thread starter davideduardo
- Start date
True. But neither does radio.
When the 2020 derecho hit Eastern Iowa, cell phone reception became very spotty. But it was fantastic compared to the zero reception that was received when nearly all of the market's stations were knocked off the air. And because it is a small market, the stations that did remain are essentially unstaffed so they just continued right along with the syndicated programming as if nothing happened. When radio was needed most, it nearly completely failed. I will give 600 WMT a little credit. They allotted some of their programming time to coverage with a severely weakened signal. But the dominant sources of information were social media, OTA TV (if you had a generator), and signs people put up everywhere. Cedar Rapids was mass chaos as city officials scrambled to try to get information out to people. Really the cell networks proved to be more reliable and infinitely more useful during the major disaster. Going forward I think solar phone chargers are a better emergency investment than pocket radios.
Not true. In metropolitan areas, there are stations that do have the ability to inform. While in 1920 less than half of all Americans lived in urban areas, now 83% live in metropolitan areas.
Further, even if a station is not staffed at all or not staffed at night or on weekends, the EAS is supposed to be activated by local authorities (a station can not activate EAS on its own9.
Again, a small market. A few weeks a go a hurricane cut off all power in Puerto Rico and cellular and internet and landline service was totally down, not coming back in some areas for over a week. But there were many radio stations on the air and emergency information was relayed all across the Island.
Similar things occurred in several counties of FL in the more recent hurricane. No cellular, no power for TV unless you had your own generator. But radio and EAS activations were there with information.
That is what I mean: in bigger cities where 4 out of every 5 people live, radio is the only major disaster communications medium.
Every major disaster I know of in the last 20 years has seen internet, landlines and cellular totally wiped out while radio has been the lifeline for people who have batteries and portable radios.
Remember, most cellular sites have battery backup and don't have generators as they are in places like office buildings, apartment buildings, church steeples and stand-alone towers where they can't store fuel and build a generator facility. While major ISPs have generators at the central locations, the relay / booster / splitter locations don't have generators and most don't even have rechargeable batteries.
In storms and earthquakes and floods, landlines that are usually dependent on buried cables are dead, too.
And your civil authorities can activate the EAS if they bothered to be trained and provide information via every operating station in the area.
What you should ask is why the EAS was not activated on all the nearby signals in your area. That is the government's responsibility to do.
I don't know where you get your information but power has nothing to do with it. It's ironic I can work all over the place on 160 m ham band with 100 watts. I've been able to pick up TIS stations on the AM broadcast band with 100 watts halfway across the country. May I suggest you go do more reading on radio before you start making such statements again thank you.
I agree. Back in about 1966, I bought an AM/SW station in San Pedro de Amaguaña, Ecuador and moved it to Quito. I had no use for the shortwave, which was on the 3.3 mHz band, as SW was dying already in Ecuador.
The station had a 200 watt transmitter for both 595 AM and the SW frequency. The station, in a building with compacted dirt floors, had a file cabinet with the full history of the station, including many reception reports from New Zealand, Australia, Europe and elsewhere in the world. The antenna was just around 25 meters of longwire hung between two trees, yet it managed to be heard in much of the world.
And the AM, on 595 kHz had a small folder full of reception reports, including ones from Scandinavia. It had a similar antenna, too.
My own DX from Ohio included the 50 watt AFRTS station at Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico on 780 kHz. I heard it more than once, and it was quite intelligible. Over the years, I heard lots of stations from Central America all in the 100 to 200 watt range... also from Ohio on the 540-1600 medium wave band.
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AM broadcasts on non standard frequencies! I think Bolivia used QRGs ending with 5 too, right?
I never understood why they used such frequencies nort why and when did they end. Do you have any information about it?
9 khz spacing on medium wave is standard in most of the world. It's the Americas that are non-standard.
Or the other way around. 😉😁
There was normal use of what DXers call "split frequencies" in Nicaragua, Belize, Panamá, Costa Rica, Honduras, Netherlands Antilles, Haiti, Ecuador, Perú, Suriname, Bolivia and Paraguay well into the 70s and in some places the 80's.
Further, a bunch of the Caribbean islands, starting with the Caymans, used splits, too. The advent of digital radio dials that jumped in 9 kHz for the rest of the world and 10 kHz for the Americas forced nations to make changes.
In some places, the strange allocations dated back to when frequencies were allocated by wavelength, so the equivalent in kilocycles was not in even 10 kilocycle breaks. In addition,, Short Wave frequencies were often on k kHz increments, particularly in the tropical band .
That's great if you have a longwire or multiband trap vertical, good receiver, and minimal noise floor. Chances are, your average consumer doesn't even own a portable radio anymore. That, and if you consider it takes 10mV/m just to get over the terrestrail noise floor, the idea of the old days with 100W being heard across the U.S. is not realistic.
So really the question remains: With the reliance on cell infrastructure, what role does broadcast radio, especially on AM, play in today's society during an emergency?
I particularly remember Belize on 834
When I was in the USN in the mid-60's we used to talk (TTY) with SFO from SE Asia regularly on 12966 SSB 100 watts. Although from the same exact position we usually could not reach Japan, Guam or Kwajalein.
H
Harvey_Dogg
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That was the easiest split channel to receive in Ohio before it moved to 830. I had a Panasonic RF 2200 that received several split channels from Latin America.
Costa Rica had 25 kHz AM spacing up until the early 1980s, so you had 525, 550, 575, 600, 625, 650, 675, etc. Many of the ##5 signals got out quite well. I recall hearing the 675 and 725 stations in Amarillo, for instance.
Nicaragua had the “normal” 10 kHz spacing with a few splits. There was one on 655 which did quite well.
The aforementioned Belize on 834 was quite familiar to AM DXers as it was the only station in the world in that exact frequency.
St. Pierre & Miquelon (French territory off the coast of Newfoundland) had a station for many years on 1375 that was a longtime target for DXers in the northeast.
Or, more importantly: what role does AM radio play when there is NOT an emergency, which is 99.95% of the time?
Seems I remember a 655 from Nicaragua or El Salvador? I could be wrong
So with 9 khz spacing for all these Caribbean/Latin American AMs, how did Trans World Radio get 800 khz for its Bonaire blaster?
Doesn't matter I guess. Everyone around here wants to just talk about what was back in the day.
Caribbean/Latin American channel spacing has long been 10 kHz with some local exceptions as discussed earlier. The 9 kHz spacing was used outside of the Americas (that is, most of the world.)
As for 800 kHz: Before the areas with 9 kHz spacing shifted their frequencies up 1 kHz as part of the 1978 mediumwave reorganization, 800 kHz was common to both the 10 kHz and 9 kHz bandplans. After 1978 stations that had been on 800 in the 9 kHz spacing areas moved to 801.
Frequencies that coincide with both the 10 and 9 kHz bandplans are 540, 630, 720, 810, 900, 990, 1080, 1170, 1260, 1350, 1440, and 1530.
Frequencies in the current 9 kHz bandplan are evenly divisible by 9.
In case we have all forgotten, many people died during the Feb 2021 Texas power grid failures.
The radio stations that remained on the air did not break from their automated and syndicated programming because they had no newsrooms and were not equipped to inform the public.
EAS was never activated and there were endless excuses on this forum about why it wasn't an emergency so EAS had no role to play.
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