It is normal when I pass this AM station's tower for any distant AM station to stop working. I've also encountered a distant FM station going silent as I passed another FM station's tower. But I was listening to a distant FM station while passing an AM tower and the FM station quit.
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Why would an AM tower make an FM station stop working/
- Thread starter vchimpanzee
- Start date
The reason....
The front end of your radio is being “swamped” or overloaded by the nearby, much stronger signal even though it is on a different frequency. This is also called desense.
That explains AM when passing an AM tower and FM when passing an FM tower. But FM when passing an AM tower?
Yep... My fancy pioneer HD unit in the work truck does that when I'm listening to an AM, and roll up on one of my FM sites... Just slams the front end of the rx.
AM signals radiate from the whole tower more or less horizontally, directly at nearby vehicles, and the nearby signal level can be measured in volts. A moderately strong FM station broadcasting from the antenna at the top of a tower a few miles away will be in the microvolt range. A radio front end (RF section) that can block enough of the AM signal while allowing the weaker FM signals signal to pass is expensive.
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