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Odd Interference\Reception of Radio Stations.

R

Route66Fan

I remember one time (About almost 25 years ago.) when my family & I were heading North on US 65 through Marshall, MO & went past the studios & tower\transmitter site of KMMO 102.9FM & 1300AM, For about five seconds, we could hear what KMMO was broadcasting even though the radio in the car was not on. I remember it took us all by surprise. I later figured out that the metal in the car we were in was acting like an antenna\receiver & that's the reason why we heard KMMO briefly, even with the radio off. This has never happened again.

Also, I remember a few times, riding in a car with some of my family members & listening to some FM stations that had weak signals & occasoinally hearing interference from AM radio stations' tower\transmitter sites (KAOL (Now KROL.) 1430AM, Carrollton, MO, along MO 10 (1 1/2mi West of Carrollton, MO & KLEX 1570AM, along US 24, about 4mi East of Lexington, MO.) for about 5 seconds as we went past them.

I also used to hear interference from KMZU 100.7FM come in over my wired PC speakers whenever I turned the volume all the way down.

What are some "Odd Interference\Reception of Radio Stations" that you all had.
 
Growing up in the Chicago area I lived not too far from the WJJD towers, 50KW. It used to overload many of my radios and it was the only station I could hear on my crystal set. It also could be received on all frequencies when I had a radio near a certain metal fence post.
 
I remember reading stories from the 1930s about WLW's 500 kW experiments. It could be heard in household appliances and (allegedly) tooth fillings all over the Cincinnati area.

I can personally attest to one: In the 1970s, I was working as a test technician for a video game manufacturer in the western suburbs of Chicago. One of the games used a circuit board to create the sounds apart from the main processor. If I put my finger on the base of one of the transistors, I could get WMAQ, WGN, and/or WBBM (all located within 15 miles of the plant), depending on how much pressure I put on the connection. My finger acted like a tuning capacitor and the rest of my body apparently was a good-enough AM antenna. Once the board was installed into the game, it didn't happen even when touched, so nobody was concerned about it.
 
Back in the mid ‘70s when I was a kid, my grandmother lived on the same street as 550 KTSA’s tower, which was about one mile away. One day when my sisters and I were visiting her, we discovered that we could hear KTSA when we picked up the telephone. The signal was weak but clear and listenable above the dial tone.
 
I grew up less than a mile from a high-powered FM transmitter.

The signal would come in quite clearly over ANYTHING that had an amplifier circuit (tape recorders, record players, phones, etc.)
People with hearing aides said it drove them nuts because they kept hearing voices of people who weren't there.

We used to joke about getting that station on our toaster.
 
When I spent my junior year of high school in Honolulu, our apartment was less than a mile from KPOI's studio and transmitter. 5kw on 1380, You could usually hear KPOI along with the dial tone when you picked up the phone. Fortunately (or sometimes maybe unfortunately), it went away when the call connected.
 
Where I grew up, WCAU (now WPHT) could be heard on an old record player I had.

Their tower was around 3 miles away.

At my aunt and uncle's house in north Jersey, WABC's tower was less than a mile away and it could be heard on their phone line.
 
FreddyE1977 said:
I grew up less than a mile from a high-powered FM transmitter.

The signal would come in quite clearly over ANYTHING that had an amplifier circuit (tape recorders, record players, phones, etc.)
People with hearing aides said it drove them nuts because they kept hearing voices of people who weren't there.

We used to joke about getting that station on our toaster.
Click to expand...

I also grew up very close to an FM transmitter: WFIU 103.7 Bloomington IN, which ran 75 kW on a short tower from an on-campus site between about 1952 and 1970. It could be heard on any consumer-grade shortwave radio, in about 500 kHz steps from 10-30 MHz, because these radios were cheap and poorly designed. This was due to overload. We never heard the station on any of our appliances, though. I lived about 2 miles north of the WFIU tower.

It had moved from 90.9 to 103.7 (which had been a CP for WSUA-FM, donated to Indiana University when its owner went bankrupt) because its transmitter on 90.9 overloaded the TVs of the day, rendering WFBM-TV Channel 6 unviewable in some parts of the city.

It moved off-campus, to the co-owned WTIU Channel 30 tower on the south side of Bloomington, with its ERP cut in half, in 1970. Problems solved.
 
Strangely enough, my relatives lived about 3 miles SE of WJJD, and there were few problems except some wide tuning on some radios. They did have a lot of old tube radios though. WJJD did come in well on my Hearever Rocket Radio. Maybe the electric company detuned the wiring? I know they did that for a lady in Lincoln Park, MI when WJBK 1500 went to 50 kW with 9 towers Daytime. I think they are both owned by Salem now, WYLL and WLQV.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
Strangely enough, my relatives lived about 3 miles SE of WJJD, and there were few problems except some wide tuning on some radios. They did have a lot of old tube radios though. WJJD did come in well on my Hearever Rocket Radio. Maybe the electric company detuned the wiring? I know they did that for a lady in Lincoln Park, MI when WJBK 1500 went to 50 kW with 9 towers Daytime. I think they are both owned by Salem now, WYLL and WLQV.
Click to expand...

This was a long time ago, but I do remember WJJD causing problems on a few devices. It is Salem owned now as WYLL.
 
When I worked at KUJ 1420 AM Walla Walla WA, the farmer in the house next to us reported "his toilet was singing every night." This would happen when we switched to night pattern, and would last for 10 to 20 minutes. Our engineer ended up installing new plastic parts in the toilet, along with some sort of grounding strap. (Who says life of a small market radio engineer isn't exciting???)

He said it was far easier than fixing the demons in our phasor cabinet. Since I was in programming, I never knew really what he meant by that. But I DO know most of our equipment was pretty much as originally built, and the station was a 3 letter Ancient Modulator from the 1920s.
 
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