Solar Minimum

[rbrucecarter5]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/photogalleries/best-pictures-of-earth/photo9.html

When the sun fires up again the next few years - watch out for intense interference caused by HD radio - especially if the FCC is foolish enough to grant the power increase!!!

 

[sbe1]

The solar minimum has sure made DXing good, but it will probably not affect FM much but AM will really be hit. Lucky though, AM HD seems to be on a death watch. We are just starting our annual Tropo feast on FM. HD will really cause interference then. Problem is most people wont notice it. Most receivers today will just mute.

 

[radioman148]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/photogalleries/best-pictures-of-earth/photo9.html

When the sun fires up again the next few years - watch out for intense interference caused by HD radio - especially if the FCC is foolish enough to grant the power increase!!!

Why will the sun flaring up have an effect on HD in particular?

 

[KB1OKL]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/photogalleries/best-pictures-of-earth/photo9.html

When the sun fires up again the next few years - watch out for intense interference caused by HD radio - especially if the FCC is foolish enough to grant the power increase!!!

Why will the sun flaring up have an effect on HD in particular?

High frequencies will propagate better. Low frequencies are great now and have been for the past few years, AM BCB and LW DXing has been great, well... BCB DXing was great until the big whoosh hit nighttime a few years ago, actually it's still great, you just have to avoid white noise zones like around WINS, WBZ, WOR, WFAN, you get the picture, vary it by location. Besides I'd be willing to bet that IBOC will be history in a few years, they've just about played out their deck it seems to me and I'm not much of a card player.

 

[w9wi]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/photogalleries/best-pictures-of-earth/photo9.html

When the sun fires up again the next few years - watch out for intense interference caused by HD radio - especially if the FCC is foolish enough to grant the power increase!!!

The solar cycle doesn't significantly affect E-layer or tropospheric propagation, so the incidence of "skip" propagation on FM is not going to increase.

On AM, absorption of distant signals actually *increases* with higher solar activity -- which means distant reception gets *worse* -- which means IBOC interference will be *less* of a problem as the solar activity increases. (though in practice I doubt most observers will notice any difference)

 

[Savage]

Yeah, COFDM carriers are steady-state and extremely high amplitude, so if they're detectable at all, they're objectionable.

Yesterday I was on sales calls with a new account rep, a guy recently laid off from Kodak, who is a radio fan and collector. We were in the neighborhood of his house and he invited me to see his radio shack. He has in his stable a number of fine German tube-type radios from the 50s and 60s - Blaupunkt, Telefunken, Grundig (apparently he has a thing for ivory piano-key pushbuttons and magic-eye tuning.) He also had a Tivoli PAL radio. After admiring the superb audio from the AM bands in the German units, I flipped on the PAL. Tuning WHAM and WHTK locally, the IBOC noise was jaw-dropping. It couldn't be tuned out and it was really loud and obnoxious.

Nobody owning one of these excellent radios would ever be able to listen to an IBOC station. You wouldn't be able to tolerate the self-interference.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Nobody owning one of these excellent radios would ever be able to listen to an IBOC station. You wouldn't be able to tolerate the self-interference.

I have similar experience with any wideband AM radio - ones which are purposely wideband like a TM-152, GE Superadio 3, Hammarlund SP-600 JX.

Unfortunately, I also have the loud self-interference on every sub-$10 radio I own, because their IF consists of one very sloppy and cheap ceramic filter. +/- 40 kHz is about standard for these cheapies. Some of them don't even bother with the ceramic filter, bypassing the IF with a cheap ceramic capacitor, and allowing the entire selectivity of the radio to be determined by the Q of the ferrite bar antenna and tuning capacitor. These are not even superhet radios any more, but are adequate for sports headphone radios, flashlight radio combos or whatever - where the tuning dial is 3/8 inch in diameter and has three frequencies listed on the entire dial for AM.

 

[JohnW]

Tuning WHAM and WHTK locally, the IBOC noise was jaw-dropping. It couldn't be tuned out and it was really loud and obnoxious.

With these two being just talkers, and CC firing people left and right, why do they even bother with IBOC?

 

[radioman148]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/photogalleries/best-pictures-of-earth/photo9.html

When the sun fires up again the next few years - watch out for intense interference caused by HD radio - especially if the FCC is foolish enough to grant the power increase!!!

Why will the sun flaring up have an effect on HD in particular?

High frequencies will propagate better. Low frequencies are great now and have been for the past few years, AM BCB and LW DXing has been great, well... BCB DXing was great until the big whoosh hit nighttime a few years ago, actually it's still great, you just have to avoid white noise zones like around WINS, WBZ, WOR, WFAN, you get the picture, vary it by location. Besides I'd be willing to bet that IBOC will be history in a few years, they've just about played out their deck it seems to me and I'm not much of a card player.

I would agree with you about IBOC. The sooner the better.

 

[radioman148]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/photogalleries/best-pictures-of-earth/photo9.html

When the sun fires up again the next few years - watch out for intense interference caused by HD radio - especially if the FCC is foolish enough to grant the power increase!!!

The solar cycle doesn't significantly affect E-layer or tropospheric propagation, so the incidence of "skip" propagation on FM is not going to increase.

On AM, absorption of distant signals actually *increases* with higher solar activity -- which means distant reception gets *worse* -- which means IBOC interference will be *less* of a problem as the solar activity increases. (though in practice I doubt most observers will notice any difference)

Thanks for the explanation.