[IRCA] IBOC/HD on AM [ FIRST TIME LISTENING EXPERIENCE FROM A DX'er ]

[Les Rayburn <les@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My truck is in the shop, so today I ran a few errands in my wife's car. 
It turned out to be an eye-opening experience for me. Her car is a 2013 
Ford SUV, equipped with an in-dash "everything" system. That includes a 
radio equipped with AM/FM/Sirius, etc. On past trips, I had listened to 
IBOC on FM...most of the stations in the Birmingham market use it to run 
a second channel of programming.

Today, I happened to be alone in the car, and decided that I'd "listen 
to noise" as my kids like to call it, by checking some of the 
semi-locals on AM. After a bit of tuning around, I hit the scan button 
on the radio. And the radio stopped on WYDE 1260 in Birmingham. They 
were running some nonsense paid program (glorified podcast) that seem 
common here these days. For a minute or so, it was the usual sound with 
good signal and some powerline noise as I drove down the road.

Suddenly, the radio turned to crystal clarity...near FM in nature. Good 
fidelity and no detectable noise at all. I looked down at the radio, and 
noticed that the "HD" indicator was on above the station frequency, 
indicating that IBOC was engaged. As I drove around, the IBOC signal 
jumped in and out, as I was about 30 miles from downtown Birmingham. 
Curious, I stopped in a good location where the receiver had a steady 
lock on the signal.

I've heard the hiss of IBOC stations on my Icom receiver in the shack, 
and looked at the annoying hash on my SDR-IQ display too. Like most 
DX'ers, I've cursed stations running IBOC at night, as their splatter 
made it difficult or impossible to DX on adjacent frequencies. But I had 
never actually heard an AM station running IBOC before.

I continued the scan looking for other stations running HD material, and 
found only WAPI 1070 AM running the system. The radio gave a brief 
visual indication that WJOX 690 AM might also be using it, but it would 
never achieve a "lock".

The experience was very interesting. From a DX'ers point of view, it's a 
no-brainer. IBOC is bad. It causes interference, and doesn't have the 
fidelity of the C-QUAM Stereo system of years ago. But from a listeners 
point of view, it might have some merit. If I were strictly interested 
in program content, such as sports talk radio, and that content was only 
available on the AM band, I think "HD-Radio" would appeal to me.

The sound is much clearer, and the noise from powerlines, auto impulse 
noise, etc. virtually disappears. That being said, it seems that the 
technology has failed to achieve critical mass in the marketplace. But I 
can finally see and hear why so many people thought that the technology 
had merit.



--
--
73,

Les Rayburn, N1LF
121 Mayfair Park
Maylene, AL 35114
EM63nf

6M VUCC #1712
AMSAT #38965
Grid Bandits #222
Southeastern VHF Society
Central States VHF Society Life Member
Six Club #2484

Active on 6 Meters thru 1296, 10GHz & Light

_______________________________________________
IRCA mailing list
IRCA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca

Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers

For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org

To Post a message: irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx