Places Where There Is No AM or FM Signal

[Gregg.]

We hear some members of Congress arguing that AM must be preserved for rural areas that get no FM stations. Have you ever been in such a location? I've driven through a few places where radio signals on both bands were almost unavailable. But I don't think AM has an advantage over FM. Most of my travels have been in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, although I did drive out west a few times on vacations.

Here are some places I've been where radio signals of either band are hard to get. You hit the "scan" button on your car radio and it keeps going like the Energizer Bunny....

--I-87 Adirondack Northway between Glens Falls and Plattsburgh. I remember decades ago, there just wasn't anything there once you were out of range of WGY Schenectady and before you could get the stations in Burlington or the 50,000 watt signals from some Montreal AM outlets. But I guess car FM radios have gotten better. Now on I-87 you can hear two Burlington VT stations almost as soon as you leave Glens Falls. Burlington is one of the few cities in the Northeast that is in Zone II (Class C) territory. One is a Hot AC (WEZF 92.9) and one is an NPR station (WVPS 107.9) that have incredible range along the Northway. Yes, WGY Schenectady has a non-directional 50,000 watt signal. But it's gets fuzzier as you are 75 or 100 miles from the Capital District. And I'm not much for Conservative Talk, which is what WGY airs, except for news on the hour.

--Maine Route 9 between Bangor and Calais. There were a few times on this route where there was NOTHING. I guess you could pull in WBZ Boston and Stephen King's 620 WZON part of the way along Route 9 in rural Maine. But Bangor (Class C for some stations) has some 100,000 watt FMs that stay with you a while. Some other FMs from the Atlantic Coast come in at several locations including a few Maine NPR and Classical outlets. And as you get closer to Calais, it has 51,000 watt Hot AC station at 102.9, automated WCRQ. But here again, I don't think AM has any advantage over FM, at least not in the daytime.

--I-15 between Barstow CA and Las Vegas. Some business person built several FM stations along I-15 just so he could advertise to people driving from LA to Vegas. But I think there may be gaps. I know Baker, about the halfway point, has an FM country and an FM rock station. They are just there for travelers. Baker's population is only 750, not enough to support any media. 640 KFI and 1070 KNX come in for a while. But they really gets fuzzy much beyond Barstow in the daytime. And now there's no more 50,000 watt KDWN in Las Vegas. So you're likely to get the Vegas Class C FM stations before you pick up anything on AM from Vegas.

 

[kfbkfb]

A friend and I drove down SR 1 - SF to LA in 1987.

I scanned both the AM band and FM band with the rental car radio - only static on the northern part of SR 1 some distance south of SF.


Kirk Bayne

 

[lanceventa]

A friend and I drove down SR 1 - SF to LA in 1987.

I scanned both the AM band and FM band with the rental car radio - only static on the northern part of SR 1 some distance south of SF.

I did that drive last October. From Big Sur until Cambria there is still a good stretch with no radio or cell phone service.

 

[semoochie]

40 years ago, we drove to Alaska and at a place called, Tok Junction(one road to Anchorage and the other to Fairbanks), I heard absolutely nothing at night! I was flabbergasted! No skywave? I didn't think it was even possible!

 

[bigdonho]

Are they still maintaining the "radio quiet zone" around Sugar Grove WV?

 

[wildthangjim]

There is, of course, a difference between no signals at all and nothing stopping a scan.

That being said, there are lots of places where the scan doesn't stop. When I lived in Denver in the 90s there were areas in the mountains where no FM was available (and the daytime AM scan stopped only on KOA). Nowadays there are more stations and translators up there but still lots of dead spots. As you go north into Wyoming and Montana, the dial becomes even quieter.

When I was in Perth, Western Australia I could drive 100 km north and the FM dial was dead. Down there, though, there are quite a few AM's left to fill in those sparsely inhabited areas of the bush. In WA, several 50kw ABC stations scattered around and several commercial stations (mostly playing classic rock or hot AC music when I was there).

In 2019 we drove from Tromso down to Reine in the Lofoten Islands in Norway. Once you left Tromso, there were no more than one or two FM's in a few of the towns but the dial was otherwise empty. Since this was in the summer and the sun was always up, no AM skywave and the band was completely dead. DAB however was listenable for most of the trip, at least 5+ NRK stations even in the most remote locations. Quite an odd experience, driving through unearthly scenery, no other cars on the road, and the kids singing along w/Billie Eilish from NRK-3 in the back seat.

 

[crainbebo]

FM is very sparse along Hwy 112 on the NW WA coast, west of Joyce. A cheap radio *years* ago got nothing usable in Sekiu, which is 50 mi NW of Port Angeles. Not even KVIX or CKKQ made it in. I'm sure a better radio would pick something up now, especially since 96.7 KBDB Forks upgraded to a new tower recently, near Lake Crescent and Beaver.

Last month, the car radio scanned through static for a while just after the Montana border on US-2, east of the Yaak River Rd junction, and west of Troy. The only stations I think it stopped on were 90.5 (KUFL Libby) and 1-2 others, I think KLKM 88.7 in Kalispell was one of them. Imagine a wide-spread Eskip opening with a 107.9 MUF or higher. 90 frequencies would be full of DX, at least. Extreme terrain blockage out here, driving at 70mph along the Kootenay River.
In manual mode, I still heard weak signals from KHTQ 94.5, KZZU 92.9, KXLY 99.9, 1-2 Sandpoint FMs, CKCV 94.1 in Creston, KQFR 90.7 Moyie Springs, the KBFI translator on 97.1, and an additional 3-4 Kalispell FMs (90.1, 105.1, 98.5). The 3ABN LPFM in Libby on 93.1 started to show up a little later. KTNY-101.7 in Libby has the worst "3KW" I've ever heard, and I swear it's about 3 watts. Traces weren't noted until the Family Dollar, one MILE out of downtown Libby.

 

[b-turner]

There are places in Texas where there is nothing on the AM or FM day or night that is anywhere close to the locations. One such spot in Sanderson, Texas. You'll find CPs and license to cover (I think) but it was a silent dial in my last visit.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

Lots of places along the northern Calif. coast where there is nothing.
Many places in Calif. gold rush country- the foothills of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada , where FM signal is either fades in and out, or there is nothing.
Very difficult to get signal on the highways going over the high Sierra, like hwy 120 to Tenaya Lake through Yosemite. Even I-80 past Truckee and over Donner Pass can have trouble with FM reception due to the terrain.
I live in the hills of the East Bay, elevation about 500’, and when driving into the city, I use KCBS AM 740 for traffic reports. Our hilly terrain makes FM undependable. It fades in and out. JMO.

 

[Mark Roberts]

I live in the hills of the East Bay, elevation about 500’, and when driving into the city, I use KCBS AM 740 for traffic reports. Our hilly terrain makes FM undependable. It fades in and out. JMO.

This seems odd to me. I live in the East Bay hills and, even lower down around Highway 13, there are lots of signals, both AM and FM. If you're in the Diablo Valley, it might be a slightly different story - local lore has it that "the Diablo Valley is where FM goes to die" - but there are still stations available and the FM boosters on Mt. Diablo are still active, if not well maintained.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

This seems odd to me. I live in the East Bay hills and, even lower down around Highway 13, there are lots of signals, both AM and FM. If you're in the Diablo Valley, it might be a slightly different story - local lore has it that "the Diablo Valley is where FM goes to die" - but there are still stations available and the FM boosters on Mt. Diablo are still active, if not well maintained

AM reception comes in fine. On conventional radios inside my house, like clock radios, the FM reception constantly fades in and out. Driving through the Diablo Valley, a lot of FM signals are very spotty. I do agree with the lore about the Diablo Valley - the terrain there is not very conducive to FM.
Highway 13 through the Oakland hills seems to have good FM reception. Not a problem there. JMO. - D.

 

[KeithE4]

The stretch of US 93 about 25-30 miles NW of Wickenburg and I-40, 25 miles or so east of Kingman, is pretty empty. The Phoenix stations fade out as one gets further away from Wickenburg, and the Kingman stations don't come in until one gets onto I-40, and even then, they're in and out for 10 miles. This is the case on both AM and FM.

 

[cc333]

@Mark Roberts @Daryl Lynn L.A. I, too, am in the East Bay past the Oakland Hills (in the Diablo valley, I guess) and FM reception is very iffy. It works, but it tends to be full of static. You can pretty much forget HD radio; it drops out constantly.

AM, on the other hand, is rock solid. I listen to KCBS, and I always listen on 740 because there's no fade (there are a couple iffy spots, one where it drops out momentarily under SR24 in Orinda, and another out by the Briones reservoir where there's some EMIs from the HT power lines there, but it doesn't bother me too much).

As for Congress wanting to mandate AM's continued presence in cars, the public safety/national security angle they're using as justification is kind of flimsy, but for the time being at least, most public safety outlets that are radio-based are usually AM-exclusive, so if nobody has an AM radio, how are they going to hear them?

Of course, there's many other, usually digital ways to get the same info, but if info needs to be pushed to many people quickly and efficiently during a fairly large emergency (something the Wireless Emergency Alert system has consistently failed miserably at (for example: the 2015 fires in Lake County, CA; the October 2017 fire storms in Napa and Sonoma counties; the 2018 Camp fire in Paradise; I'm sure many others), AM has a certain advantage, in that transmission towers tend to be centrally located somewhere relatively safe from fires and other related phenomena (at least out here in the west, but not always everywhere– a vulnerability that any terrestrial radio system has to some extent, unfortunately), whereas cell towers tend to be scattered throughout the hills and mountains where coverage exists (because of this, at least here, cellular infrastructure tends to be FAR more vulnerable to being damaged/destroyed by fire, hence, it's usually among the first services to go mostly or entirely offline when a fire comes, either because of damaged equipment or simply by being severely overtaxed by the flood of users trying to log on simultaneously).

Whether the info that gets broadcast is actually worth listening to is a different matter entirely, of course, but maybe with some guarantee of AM's continued existence in cars, some stations would have a renewed interest in trying to broadcast some content that's actually useful during times of emergency (of course, barring some other kind of incentive, without ad revenue or some other kind of money inflow, most stations aren't going to be very interested in spending the necessary monies to maintain even a minimal local news staff to cover such emergencies).

In other words, if Congress wants to mandate AM in cars, they have to find a way to incentivize it such that stations and listeners actually want to use it to their advantage.

Otherwise, why bother?

And as for AM stations being mostly shut down in Europe (which is ostensibly what Congress is trying to implicitly prevent, since essentially all AM stations are effectively dead if automotive AM receivers completely disappear), I think they can get away with going all FM and DAB better there because most of the population is packed fairly tightly, they have better infrastructure, and many EU governments have, to my knowledge, at least some level of control over their respective domestic radio markets such that they can make the transitions happen fairly quickly and seamlessly as needed; on the other hand, the US, with it's Hodge-podge of half-baked digital radio standards, intractable political infighting, bureaucratic red tape, and notoriously fickle and fragmented radio markets, has almost no chance of making such a transition happen any time soon (US TV markets somehow fared better and managed to make the transition to digital, although that isn't quite the same thing, because in that case, the FCC actually mandated the transition. No such mandates have happened for radio – Look at HD radio, for example – so, naturally, the majority of things are preferring to stay the same, which is fine. Digital for TV somehow works better; digital radio just seems like a waste of resources when analog radio is still adequate for the most part.

c

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

cc333 said:

I, too, am in the East Bay past the Oakland Hills (in the Diablo valley, I guess) and FM reception is very iffy. It works, but it tends to be full of static. You can pretty much forget HD radio; it drops out constantly.

AM, on the other hand, is rock solid. I listen to KCBS, and I always listen on 740 because there's no fade (there are a couple iffy spots, one where it drops out momentarily under SR24 in Orinda, and another out by the Briones reservoir where there's some EMIs from the HT power lines there, but it doesn't bother me too much).

Yes, this is my experience also.

I'm hopeful that EV manufacturers who have not already removed AM from their cars will find a way to continue to include them.

I agree w/ you about AM radio in Europe. I just returned from a trip to northern Europe, and AM radio seems to be almost non-existent. -- Daryl Lynn

 

[CentralFL]

I remember as you get towards the eastern parts of Yellowstone National Park there were either no stations (or nothing I wanted to hear).

 

[MarioMania]

How about Alaska going towards the Arctic Ocean?

 

[BRNout]

The closest place I visited with nearly no signals was Fort Portal, Uganda. They had a local FM signal (relay of a national channel), but it signed off at like 11 pm or midnight. And the am band was nearly empty - at night. Unlike in Alaska, where auroral activity can kill skywave, there was no such excuse along the equator. On the entire band, I only heard 2 very faint (and different) music stations - and there was so little electrical interference, that you didn't hear static, the signals were simply faint and they faded (mostly out). It was pretty interesting.

 

[Theater of My Mind]

--Maine Route 9 between Bangor and Calais. There were a few times on this route where there was NOTHING.

This is my recollection as well. There were also long stretches with no cell service, although I noticed what appeared to be at least one new tower along the way when I drove it again earlier this year.

My favorite station out of Bangor is college-alternative WHSN. Once that fades, I flip over to SiriusXM knowing the broadcast band will be empty and streaming won't really work. It's a fun drive blasting through the isolation of downeast Maine on that road, over the hills and around the bends.

 

[crainbebo]

That's crazy! Two AM stations at night in Uganda. I wonder if one of them was the 1377khz in Tanzania, Radio Free Africa (about 300 mi from Fort Portal). That one is sometimes heard in New England and the Maritimes. Mozambique is also on a few MW channels at about 1,600 miles from Fort Portal.

How long ago was this?

 

[cyberdad]

As posted recently... On my drive from Thunder Bay, Ontario to Kapuskasing Ontario this past Labor Day weekend on the Trans-Canada Highway, I experienced about 7 hours of a blank AM dial during daylight. FM was a different story.

AM at night, however. in both cities was loaded with signals and some interesting DX.

About 50 miles east of Kapuskasing is the town of Cochrane, Ontario, where my maternal grandparents grew up. I had aunt who lived in Cochrane her entire life, and was a regular listener of WGN and also The Grand Old Opry Saturday nights on WSM.