Places where the FM dial is blank

[K6JHU]

The good news is that there is a pretty wide reaching station on 95.9 in Santa Rosa. The bad news is that last time I listened, it was in Spanish

 

[fordranger797]

I don't know if the entire FM band was completely blank but going south on the coastal Highway 1 once you get a ways past Monterey and the mountains start getting tall, there was a stretch where I couldn't find anything at all when I searched a good portion of the dial.

Same experience for me. You might hear a bit of piece of audio and it would be back to static. No AM either.

 

[MarioMania]

How about in Goldfield, NV?

Where the Goldfield Hotel is

 

[fordranger797]

Pretty much no FM reception at Neah Bay WA

-crainbebo

I live in WA, but I've never made it out to Neah Bay. I thought for sure you'd be able to pull in some FM up there!

 

[fordranger797]

How about in Goldfield, NV?

Where the Goldfield Hotel is

Looks like they might have a few to choose from!
http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/locate?select=city&city=Goldfield+NV&x=0&y=0

 

[MarioMania]

Only 3 Stations there, Not much

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

Back as recently as the 1970s and even into the 1980s, there were areas of Michigan where only a handful of Class C or Class A local stations were available. The Class Cs were not even at the full later Class C1 facility level. They were great for DXing. Class B-C stations up to 250 miles away, and Class A stations 150 miles away were heard on a nearly regular basis. They would fade in and out, but they were there. The reason you could get Class As that far is that they were on Class A Channels, and no stations were overpowering them. You needed to have a good portable like a Sony in those days, or an outdoor directional antenna on a rotator for best results.

 

[fordranger797]

Back as recently as the 1970s and even into the 1980s, there were areas of Michigan where only a handful of Class C or Class A local stations were available. The Class Cs were not even at the full later Class C1 facility level. They were great for DXing. Class B-C stations up to 250 miles away, and Class A stations 150 miles away were heard on a nearly regular basis. They would fade in and out, but they were there. The reason you could get Class As that far is that they were on Class A Channels, and no stations were overpowering them. You needed to have a good portable like a Sony in those days, or an outdoor directional antenna on a rotator for best results.

It's sort of like that out here in Washington State. Granted, you won't have any luck if you are in the Seattle area, but the rural areas seem to provide pretty interesting results. The mountains in this region give room for a lot of dead zones. It's refreshing not to have so much overlap.

 

[boombox4]

Adak, Alaska is reportedly devoid of audible FM stations. I don't think dominant atmospheric conditions that far north allow for any real tropospheric ducting or E skip activity either. There may be some distant catches on AM and shortwave at night though. Besides that, there's millions of "locales" if you will in very remote areas of Canada distanced from sizable towns, although the tsunami of AM to FM station conversions in places where the space on the spectrum exists has somewhat but far from entirely changed this.

http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/lo...b=Y&format=&dx=1&radius=&freq=&sort=freq&sid=

That there is another surreal and terrifying experience in the making!

I once knew a guy who worked in Chignik, AK for a year or so (Chignik is on the Alaska Peninsula, eight or nine hundred miles to the East of Adak). He had a DX-160 and a lengthy wire and heard Australia and Japan easily. So I'm sure the AM band comes alive at Adak at night, if you have a decent AM radio.

 

[crainbebo]

With Japan being in the 1900-3000 mile range from Adak, it should be easy on a portable to hear the big guns (774, 828, 747, 594, 693). Other very possible areas include South Korea (2800-3000mi), eastern China (2800-3900 miles) and Taiwan (3700-3800 mi).
Hawaii is also very possible at 2300-2500 miles. I know a DXer in Anchorage who has gotten several Hawaiians including the new 1240-KEWE Kahului running 5KW. (NOPE! I didn't mean 1KW - it is 5000 watts on a graveyard! I suppose with no graveyarders for 2500 miles, they can do whatever they want there.)
Anchorage is about 1175 miles to the NE of Adak.

 

[MarioMania]

With Japan being in the 1900-3000 mile range from Adak, it should be easy on a portable to hear the big guns (774, 828, 747, 594, 693). Other very possible areas include South Korea (2800-3000mi), eastern China (2800-3900 miles) and Taiwan (3700-3800 mi).
Hawaii is also very possible at 2300-2500 miles. I know a DXer in Anchorage who has gotten several Hawaiians including the new 1240-KEWE Kahului running 5KW. (NOPE! I didn't mean 1KW - it is 5000 watts on a graveyard! I suppose with no graveyarders for 2500 miles, they can do whatever they want there.)
Anchorage is about 1175 miles to the NE of Adak.

How about the California stations on AM

Like KCBS 740 - San Francisco

 

[davideduardo]

How about the California stations on AM

Like KCBS 740 - San Francisco

KCBS is directional to the south (thus its location in the north end of the Bay)

 

[davideduardo]

I once knew a guy who worked in Chignik, AK for a year or so (Chignik is on the Alaska Peninsula, eight or nine hundred miles to the East of Adak). He had a DX-160 and a lengthy wire and heard Australia and Japan easily. So I'm sure the AM band comes alive at Adak at night, if you have a decent AM radio.

It's not so much the distance as the lack of local stations to create interference.

When nearly every station in the US and Canada was off after midnight on Sunday, Hawaii, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia were relatively easy catches in the eastern US and a snap west of the rockies.

Of course, Adak has the advantage of very extended night paths during the Northern Hemisphere's winter.

 

[davideduardo]

I suppose with no graveyarders for 2500 miles, they can do whatever they want there.)
A.

When the channels are empty, graveyarders can be heard at great distance.

All the graveyard channels were empty for several thousand miles from Quito in the late 60's and I logged US Class IV stations from as far away as Montana as well as plenty from the Gulf states.

 

[b-turner]

Having worked in Del Rio, Texas I can tell you Sanderson, Texas gets nothing on either the AM or FM band. That pretty much goes for all of Terrell County with about 2,400 square miles and only about 900 people. I think Sanderson is about 800 people. At one point the county had almost triple the population but when the railroad crew quit stopping to overnight there and the mohair subsidy ended, the county really lost lots of people quickly. If the Border patrol had not opened offices there, the town might not even be as large as it is today. In fact, a group of local folks started a non-profit newspaper after the last guy went under but I can't say they're still publishing. The closest town of any size is 67 miles away, Fort Stockton, with an AM and FM station that barely covers that county. Other nearest stations are a 100 watt non-comm in Marathon and stations in Del Rio. On that stretch of highway, I think it is 90 miles to Alpine and 120 miles to Del Rio. An engineer I know did the application for a 250 watt AM in Langtry, Texas but I don't think that went beyond the CP, obviously a ploy to move it to Del Rio since Langtry is about 25 people.

 

[semoochie]

When the channels are empty, graveyarders can be heard at great distance.

All the graveyard channels were empty for several thousand miles from Quito in the late 60's and I logged US Class IV stations from as far away as Montana as well as plenty from the Gulf states.

It's funny you should use the "Class IV" reference because I just had a guy nearly bite my head off for using the term. You used it in the historical sense however so that's probably alright.

 

[MarioMania]

How about the Outbacks in Aus?

 

[1L6E6VHF]

I've been in a few places in northwest Lower Michigan where the AM scan stops at nothing. The soil conductivity is awful. Even the 50kW on 1210 only breaks the squelch for about 20 miles.

In contrast, doing an FM scan brings only a few short of 100 stations.

 

[AKDXer]

Much of Southeast Alaska! Unless you're in or near a town/city. Lots of rural areas with literally nothing on FM! It would've been even more blank a few decades ago. Not many stations, relatively speaking, and high mountains don't help matters. However, DXing from a floatplane is interesting; above some of the average terrain the signals go way further.

Also, unless in/near one of the major towns, nothing on AM during the day! But if you have an extremely good antenna, at least here, you can hear the regional/local "hometown" AMs from Sitka, Ketchikan, or Juneau during the day. KIFW 1230, KTKN 930, and KINY 800. Not sure about KXXJ 1330 during the day though...I haven't tried.

We also used to have KRSA (Or maybe it was KSRA, don't remember) 580 Petersburg, until it went off the air. It was a religious station that had a fairly strong signal for what it was, and was barely audible on cheap radios here in Port Alexander during the day. Not sure about at night.

My dad related a story to me recently of owning a piece of property that was about a mile straight-as-the-crow-flies from their transmitter back in the day, and no matter what channel you tried tuning to on the radio, you got them! He told me he often thought about sabotaging the transmitter LOL.

 

[AKDXer]

Another one I never mentioned: About 40 miles of the Seward Highway here in AK, between about Turnagain/Portage and Seward...NOTHING! Well, save for an occasional bit of audio from a station or two, then back to static.

Ever driven around for an extended period with the radio on "Seek" going through the dial over and over (at least on FM) with NOTHING?