Things that I dont like about HD Radio

[Chuck]

I love HD radio and the idea, I just wish I could DX it better. my home place is 60 miles to San antonio, I have a outdoor 12 element Yagi about 20' in the air. going to San antonio, it drops out some durring the day, I also use my TV antenna for Austin which is a local for me station coverage, my TV antenna is about 25' up in the air. If they could fix the coverage problem imagin how many stations I could get!

I hear ya, but the maximum protected coverage of even a full "C" is <58 miles.

Clouseau

Do they make bigger Yagi afordable antennas? I just dont want to pay over 100$ for a antenna need a better paid job for that!

Winegard makes a very good FM Yagi. Here is a link to someone who sell them, and a few others. http://www.starkelectronic.com/fm.htm

I make no guaranty about the dealer, but the antennas are good ones. They are in the $100 range. You can search for other dealers. We use these antennas for our translators. There are some others on the web site that look equally interesting.

I'm surprised that you can't get HD at 60 miles from Austin or San Antonio with an outdoor antenna. I'm about that far from Shreveport, LA, and my Sangean HDT-1 decodes HD through my TV antenna, which is fairly similar to the FM antenna I'm recommending. Perhaps it has to do with terrain? Are you in the Hill Country? Maybe just increasing the height would help.

 

[jras20]

I love HD radio and the idea, I just wish I could DX it better. my home place is 60 miles to San antonio, I have a outdoor 12 element Yagi about 20' in the air. going to San antonio, it drops out some durring the day, I also use my TV antenna for Austin which is a local for me station coverage, my TV antenna is about 25' up in the air. If they could fix the coverage problem imagin how many stations I could get!

I hear ya, but the maximum protected coverage of even a full "C" is <58 miles.

Clouseau

Do they make bigger Yagi afordable antennas? I just dont want to pay over 100$ for a antenna need a better paid job for that!

Winegard makes a very good FM Yagi. Here is a link to someone who sell them, and a few others. http://www.starkelectronic.com/fm.htm

I make no guaranty about the dealer, but the antennas are good ones. They are in the $100 range. You can search for other dealers. We use these antennas for our translators. There are some others on the web site that look equally interesting.

I'm surprised that you can't get HD at 60 miles from Austin or San Antonio with an outdoor antenna. I'm about that far from Shreveport, LA, and my Sangean HDT-1 decodes HD through my TV antenna, which is fairly similar to the FM antenna I'm recommending. Perhaps it has to do with terrain? Are you in the Hill Country? Maybe just increasing the height would help.

It is pretty hilly in my area between here and San antonio, but San antonio HD comes in some and drops out some. The really strange thing is that I am in the local of KKMJ, and their HD signal seems to be the weakest of all of Austin HD stations. With my Yagi it cant pull in KKMJ's HD with it going to San antonio. But I can pull in all the other HD channels in Austin.

 

[Chuck]

It is pretty hilly in my area between here and San antonio, but San antonio HD comes in some and drops out some. The really strange thing is that I am in the local of KKMJ, and their HD signal seems to be the weakest of all of Austin HD stations. With my Yagi it cant pull in KKMJ's HD with it going to San antonio. But I can pull in all the other HD channels in Austin.

That's interesting, since they are 49,000 watts at 1300+ feet HAAT. I'm not sure where you are exactly, but at 60 miles they should still be quite solid. In San Antonio they should be "iffy" in analog and not there in HD. Maybe multipath from the hills is causing problems in your specific location. Sometimes just moving the antenna a few feet will make a big difference.

 

[jras20]

It is pretty hilly in my area between here and San antonio, but San antonio HD comes in some and drops out some. The really strange thing is that I am in the local of KKMJ, and their HD signal seems to be the weakest of all of Austin HD stations. With my Yagi it cant pull in KKMJ's HD with it going to San antonio. But I can pull in all the other HD channels in Austin.

That's interesting, since they are 49,000 watts at 1300+ feet HAAT. I'm not sure where you are exactly, but at 60 miles they should still be quite solid. In San Antonio they should be "iffy" in analog and not there in HD. Maybe multipath from the hills is causing problems in your specific location. Sometimes just moving the antenna a few feet will make a big difference.

To be excact I'm about 30 miles from KKMJ's and all of Austin's Transmitter towers, about 60 miles or so to San antonio in the center of the city.

 

[Chuck]

To be excact I'm about 30 miles from KKMJ's and all of Austin's Transmitter towers, about 60 miles or so to San antonio in the center of the city.

Even though I'm known to be a bit skeptical about HD, I'm totally amazed that you can't get KKMJ's HD signal at 30 miles. Have you tried using an indoor folded dipole? I'm thinking that perhaps there is something we don't know about that is influencing your outdoor antenna.

 

[semoochie]

I recently read in the local SBE that there is now talk of increasing HD power 3-10db. I'm trying to find out if it's a sliding scale or they haven't decided yet on which number it will fall. They've also figured out how to get an HD2 on AM using very low bit rates. Even at the current power levels, I'm able to get HD reception in my car below 50dbu before any dropouts!

 

[Mike Sheridan]

We are in the early days of Digital broadcasting. I have a feeling that just as FM did that Digital will get better.

Anyone here old enough to remember when FM used to drift? ;D

 

[jras20]

Lets hope they can increase the power for HD FM. I wonder if digital cell phone towers have any effect? I'm not even a mile from 2 digital cell phone towers I wonder if that has some effect?

 

[Chuck]

We are in the early days of Digital broadcasting. I have a feeling that just as FM did that Digital will get better.

Anyone here old enough to remember when FM used to drift? ;D

Yes, the problem was the radios, not the transmission method. As the radios would heat up, the tuners drifted. That was what the AFC control was for.

I still have several radios that have that feature. They still drift a bit, but they sound OK. Admittedly though, today's FM tuners are way better. I can't say the same for AM though.

 

[stevenNOLA]

KASE HD-100.7 has the longest distance of any Austin FM station. I received it all the way out to LaGrange and spotty up to Schulenburg.

 

[awj223]

"Analog Vs. Digital Coverage"

"In radio a digital signal always means a less robust signal than analog. Digital doesn't go as far, requiring many more multi-million dollar base stations to cover the same area as analog. It is cost efficient for a cellular carrier to switch to digital, since they can carry several calls on a single frequency, instead of just one for analog. But coverage and audio quality will suffer."

http://www.privateline.com/mt_dailynotes/2002/10/analog_vs_digital_coverage.html

This article, which I pointed out earlier, is about radio - with cell phones, it still concerns digital transmissions, which are not as robust as analog.

You know that the cell phone issue has to do with power levels being lower than they were in the old analog days, right? You can't power a pocket sized handheld phone with a heavy lead-acid battery like you could a bag phone. Pocket phones can't transmit at 3 watts. They use about .6 watts. The reduced coverage isn't because it's digital, it's due to lower power levels resulting from shrinking technology and smaller batteries. Put a digital system in a bag phone and you have your range back: http://www.motorola.com/governmenta...gationpath=id_803i/id_2629i/id_2796i/id_2818i
Again, digital isn't inherently less robust than analog. It can be less robust if the compression ratio is too high, about equal, or even more robust than analog with a very low compression ratio and lots of error correction. Cell phones in general use high compression ratios to fit the most users on the network, sacrificing some robustness for capacity because spectrum is expensive and new cell sites cost in the 6-7 figures. However, this was a tradeoff made in the design of the system and the codecs, not a property of digital modulation itself.

 

[jras20]

KASE HD-100.7 has the longest distance of any Austin FM station. I received it all the way out to LaGrange and spotty up to Schulenburg.

Did you try to test KKMJ? I'm wondering if its just my setup.