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This is a miracle! I get an AM station in HD at night!

N

nd2023

Banned
I tuned to 700 on my Sony XDRF1HD tonight while doing a band scan. WLW was blasting in. To my surprise, the HD indicator flashes! Then it stays solid! The audio quality starts to sound like a 32k stream! Could this be real? I was getting WLW in HD at night in New Jersey!!! Then it faded after a minute and WLW never came in HD again.

This is the first time since I owned this radio that I got AM in HD. None of the locals during the day come in HD. I'm 20 miles away from WPHT 1210 and I never heard it in HD. The most that happens is the HD indicator flashes. I rarely see the HD indicator flash at night on any station, but I hear IBUZ. But tonight was different. WLW came in strong enough to decode in HD for a whole minute! This was the first time in the 2 years I owned this radio that I ever heard an AM station in HD. I could not believe my eyes and ears.

This gives us hope. If you own an HD radio, maybe someday you'll be able to get an AM station in beautiful HD. I think the Buffalo Bills will win a Super Bowl before I get another AM station to decode in HD on this radio. The national debt will be paid off before I get another AM station in HD. Facebook will lose its popularity before I get another AM station in HD.
 
Interesting since I hear WPHT in HD down here in Wilmington, NC almost nightly from my car. I have a Pioneer Deh p-7200hd. Signal does fade like normal skywave but still get it.
 
You should be able to pick up the "big 3" in hd from where you are. I picked them up from Pt. Pleasant inside with an Assurian and you are closer.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
 
One thing that might help with that Sony is to take two yardsticks, make an "X" frame, and wind one turn of wire around it. Use that instead of the tiny loop they sell with the Sony. It will come alive with signal strength - if anything will let it work in HD, that will do it! I got KMIC - a 5kW station 25 miles away - to come in HD mono that way. Too weak for HD stereo though. And WOAI at 180 miles occasionally flashes the indicator, but won't lock. A 1620 close to 80 miles away occasionally flashes the HD indicator. Nothing at night, though.
 
Ive been getting WLW to lock in HD quite a bit here at night. It'll usually only stay locked for about a minute before a skywave fade knocks it back to analog. I'm using the XDR-F1HD with a Kaito AN-200 tunable AM antenna. 690 has been empty here since Montreal is still off air which helps. I suspect once 690 signs back on in Montreal sometime this year it will be a lot harder to get WLW in HD.
 
I have done something like this in the past--build a 2 1/2 foot loop, connect it to the XDR-F1HD, and whenever an AM HD station comes in strong enough to get call letters displayed on the Sony's screen. I had calls like WCBS, WFAN, WTAM, KMOX, WLW, WBBM, WRVA, WBZ, WFNI, WHO, WMAL (when it had HD on) and WPHT displayed.
 
There's electrical noise for some reason, most likely due to computers and light dimmers. Analog AM is listenable. FM is unaffected since I have a rooftop antenna. I can't get WPHT in HD day or night. The call letters show up but no HD decoding happens. I use the provided AM antenna, so maybe that's why me receiving AM HD is rarer than an Indianapolis Colts win this season.

FM HD reception is great. I'm able to get FM stations from 55 miles away in HD, and there's frequent HD reception via e-skip and tropo.

I'm amazed that my first ever AM HD reception on that radio is WLW. I've never heard AM in HD before in my life.
 
MY most interesting catch of AM HD occurred when I received WHAM in Kentucky when the analog signal was nearly inaudible. The analog signal was cluttered with other stations, but 1170 and/or 1190 was apparently clear enough to allow for the decoding of the digital signal.
 
Yes. Much to the disadvantage of WWVA and/or WOWO. Did you forget that there is a frequency allocation system here in the USA?

If you have, one supposes you can be forgiven. In typical government fashion, qualified engineers with integrity at the FCC have been elbowed aside by unqualified politician-lawyers, captives of big-money special interests. (Or even medium-money special interests like iBiquity.) Therefore the 80-year old frequency allocation system has been effectively discarded in favor of a free-for-all to supposedly benefit HD-AM interferors.
 
Savage said:
Yes. Much to the disadvantage of WWVA and/or WOWO. Did you forget that there is a frequency allocation system here in the USA?

If you have, one supposes you can be forgiven. In typical government fashion, qualified engineers with integrity at the FCC have been elbowed aside by unqualified politician-lawyers, captives of big-money special interests. (Or even medium-money special interests like iBiquity.) Therefore the 80-year old frequency allocation system has been effectively discarded in favor of a free-for-all to supposedly benefit HD-AM interferors.
Click to expand...

Forgiven for what!? I didn't say I like the AM system, I merely said it was an interesting juxtaposition to be able to hear the digital signal with full quieting, while at the same time, the analog signal was buried in the co-channel clutter. While I support the FM system, I thing digital radio in its current form is incompatible with AM for a number of reasons. I would be willing to put up with the interference if the AM system actually worked, but I doubt there is any system that would work due to AM's susceptibility to numerous sources of static, co-channel interference from other stations, and the the vagaries of skywave reception.
 
Geographer said:
Forgiven for what!? I didn't say I like the AM system, I merely said it was an interesting juxtaposition to be able to hear the digital signal with full quieting, while at the same time, the analog signal was buried in the co-channel clutter.
Click to expand...

A couple of interesting observations -

In the wilds of New Mexico, at a rest stop near Grenville - I was able to clearly hear IBOC sideband pairs from many stations - like Chicago - in the middle of summer, the middle of the day. Absolutely no trace of the analog signal - but since there are so few IBOC AM's in the country, it didn't take long to deduce where the sideband pairs were coming from. This was in 2007 when virtually all Chicago stations were running IBOC.

At night in Texas, it is possible to hear the sideband pairs from WOR 710 - but never the analog signal. I know they are from WOR, because I can throw a null at the WOR tower and the sidebands on 700 and 720 disappear. I do this with a precision surveyor's compass, it is definitely nulling right towards New York City - no other 710 would fit the geometry.

Both observations have made me curious about the DX potential of the entirely digital system. It may well be that completely digital AM stations would have far greater coverage than they do in analog.
 
Maybe - when it works. And as is always the case with digital, it either works more-or-less perfectly - or not at all. That's not what we need from AM radio.
 
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