little1 said:
Well, just because you say it doesn't make it true. And I have a hard time believing that ANYTHING is going to weaken KLIF's signal 10, 20 or 30 miles from the transmitter site.
You still don't get it - signal strength is inversely proportional to the square of distance from the transmitter. So an observable weakness in Houston absolutely means a proportional weakness over DFW.
A lot, perhaps most listening is done in cars. And your scenario is correct for initial setup of car radios. Assuming people even bother to set up the AM band - which is a whole other issue.
A lot of listening, however, is also done on cheap portables. IF - and that's a big if - a listener tunes to one AM station and leaves the tuning set there, then they won't ever encounter IBOC hash again. But you yourself listed half a dozen or so favorite AM stations. As you tune across the dial, each of those favorites that runs IBOC is surrounded on both sides by loud, unpleasant hash. What is more, it takes careful tuning to get right on frequency - if you are off even a little bit, the IBOC phase modulation no longer cancels out, and you hear more and more self-jamming hash the farther you tune off frequency. Try it - since you obviously believe I am a liar about KLIF relative strength pre-and post IBOC. FYI - I am a careful, methodical researcher, and used the same identical receiver for before and after tests. Based on those tests, KLIF has a lot to worry about over DFW. We aren't talking just a few dB, we are talking about 10 dB or more. That will take a lot of marginal radios 40 - 50 miles out in McKinney and places like that right out of contention to receive KLIF. Those clock radios with inch and a half ferrite bars. Especially since KLIF has to throw a notch in that general direction at night to protect WNAX, which can be easily heard in parts of NE DFW if you throw a null towards the KLIF towers.
Dismiss DX'ers as outmodes and geeks if you want, but reports like this used to get a lot of attention from station engineers, who realized DX'ers were there best friends and first line of defense against lost coverage. But when it comes to this defective digital system - any DX'er who dares to say there is coverage loss is treated like scum, insulted, marginalized, and ignored as a geek. But the coverage loss won't go away because of name calling. It will only go away when the defective system is shut down and the power it was sapping is restored to what matters, the 99.99% of listeners still hearing the station on analog. And the added benefit of eliminating self-jamming for those listeners is a bonus.
Incidentally, I never refer to my engineering degree as "EE" because of the words that have two "e's" in the middle. I don't care what you think of me. At least I have the courage to stand up and say "KLIF has a very real problem - since they added IBOC. Attention needs to be paid - or their suburban listeners will start giving up and go elsewhere." In my engineering judgement, the coverage loss over suburban DFW is real, is caused by IBOC and IBOC alone, it won't go away, they WILL lose audience in those profitable suburbs. So - start insulting me because I dare to challenge the sacred cow of IBOC. It won't change the problem, it won't change me, and you just come off as annoying and rude to all the readers here.
Incidentally, when WBAP canned the IBOC, their daytime coverage came right back. But you won't believe me because it challenges the mindless mantra that IBOC will save AM.
