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Night AM IBOC starts tonight

D

DeadElvis

A bit esoteric, but, I'll offer it:

At midnight Eastern tonight, AM stations running IBOC (HD Radio) may begin using that at night. You'll recall, this issue has caused great consternation as IBOC will certainly cause adjacent channel interference, and will raise the overall noise floor on impacted channels.

I will be curious to see how well the IBOC sidebands survive a skywave hop. I have heard FM IBOC via skywave, during the big sporadic-E opening in late July. It worked fine, but the systems are different enough as to not be analagous in those conditions. We'll see.

Only two AMs run IBOC in Memphis: WREC and WDIA. Daytime coverage of the IBOC ain't the best for those stations. Night coverage will be much less, assuming the stations light it up at night. There may still be some work ahead for engineers in get compliant and useful transmitting plants.

And, so it goes...

DE
 
I can hardly wait to see what will happen. Some DA operations that have not installed phase correction will not turn on yet, as I understand. I don’t know if WDIA or WREC will be turning on, but most if not all the CC, ABC, Citadel and CBS non-directional clear channels have said they will, unless there has been some change in the past few days. The only exception is Cox who has suspended AM IBOC transmissions TFN due to receiver noise issues. Last week, I was in the field extracting nighttime field measurements and recordings in the sky-wave service field as background and will return to those same geographic locations post turn-on to perform those same measurements and recordings. We indeed have the privilege to live in interesting times don’t we?

w/
 
Yeah, I am thinking the best test might be WLW/700 in Cincinnati. Big signal, usually alone on-channel.

Other stations that might put a decent signal into Memphis might include WOAI/1200, and 1700 north of Dallas -- just 1kW at night, but there is very little interference (I hear them a lot).

Should be fun.

DE
 
I'm afraid your post should have been titled "AM nighttime service ends tonight".

I'll be interested to see what Watt coems up with.

I think WDIA's array is a little narrow. That should be interesting. Ditto if 680 ever tried IBOC. The 680 array is so narrow a good high note (back when they played music) would cause the transmitter to VSWR overload.
 
So, it's on... A few observations.

WREG does not seem to be using HD after sunset. Since I live in eastern Germantown, I can't hear WDIA at night, so I can't comment about its night signal.

I did get to play with the radio a bit this evening. The only HD/IBOC I found was on big 50 kW signals. I was able to decode KMOX for a couple of minutes and WOAI decoded for a few seconds. Other big clears like WGN, WHO, WLW, etc., caused the HD light to blink, but not lock. I am sure some other time, it will.

I did notice that when KMOX locked, the hash on the adjacent channels was strong. 1110 and 1130 were totally covered.

So, we'll have to see how this all goes.

DE
 
I powered up my father's old JVC home receiver tonight, putting it on AM for the first time since I moved to AM-free Grenada. I didn't hear any noticeable hash (at least, not under the TV/computer/alarm/DSL noises. I did discover that my deaf-in-the-daytime receiver comes alive after dark! WREC and WDIA from Memphis and WSM from Nashvegas were all relatively noise free and steady here in Grenada -- at 9pm.

It'll be interesting over time to listen to the gradual increase in nighttime AM HD.

BTW, does any Memphis AM still do C-QUAM stereo? I tried for WSM earlier and it seems they have shut off stereo... :(
 
As a matter of quick update...

By far, the easiest skywave signal to decode here in Memphis seems to be WLAC/Nashville. I can hold full audio for often a few minutes at a time.

DE
 
> BTW, does any Memphis AM still do C-QUAM stereo? I tried for WSM earlier and it seems they have shut off stereo...

Sorry. Missed this question earlier.

No; once 1210 shut down years ago, that was it.

DE
 
DeadElvis said:
> BTW, does any Memphis AM still do C-QUAM stereo? I tried for WSM earlier and it seems they have shut off stereo...

Sorry. Missed this question earlier.

No; once 1210 shut down years ago, that was it.

DE
Click to expand...

Well that stinks. I have a perfectly good Sony Walkman sitting in a drawer going unused. I haven't found a single AM stereo station in the region yet.
 
If you want to take it on a road trip, someone recently postulated that 950 in Forest City was still Quam-ming.
 
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