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Re: [IRCA] [NRC-AM] Noise Is the Big Problem for AM, SBE Argues

--- Begin Message --- 
I suppose that with spectrum storing SDR receivers one can go to a beach, mountain, desert, farm, etc. site a few times a year and come back home with enough DX to work on for several months.


Newfoundland DXers have been known to keep finding new ones in their gigabytes of files over two years after a DXpedition.


A different way to do things for sure.  Since tips about stuff heard more than a month or two ago start heading into the "historical" rather than "currently relevant" category, you need to stick a few from-the-car-somewhere-quiet sessions in between the really serious trips just to keep things fresh.  
For many, the idea of DXing at one's own home is over.  I can't really get anything serious indoors on portables or indoor loops but fortunately the SuperLoops a hundred or so feet out back are still somewhat productive.  The noise floor is about 20 dB above "pristine" but fortunately, at a site only 2-3 miles inland heading south, interfering broadcast signals and static are still the limiting factor most nights.  That's a lot better than inside the house where even some semi-locals are under various squeaks, squawks, warbles, and birdies from all the surrounding gadgetry.


For the average poor slob, AM is dead at home and not even all that great in a mobile environment.  Noise is a major part of the problem and less-than-engaging program material factors in too.  Our local station (WBAS) on 1240, one of the few strong enough to beat down all the digi-hash in houses and on the road, runs Portuguese, a language spoken by - at best - 10% of the people in town.  Meanwhile we have a predominately Irish / British / Italian descent over-50 population that would love something like what Bob Bittner runs on WJIB and WJTO, stations whose signals can be scratchy by day and non-existent at night.  WKFY "Koffee" (98.7 / 100.5) throws us some crumbs once in a while but I'm sure 1240 could be much more useful running the likes of Sinatra / Bennett / "rat pack" and a splash of big-band and post-war small combo jazz (Monk, Mingus, Miles, Brubeck, etc.) with involved / sophisticated / knowledgeable personalities a la old WNEW NY or Boston's late superstar DJ Bill Marlowe.  But the experts figure that an older population doesn't matter even if it's over half the town.  Even if those are the only people with a nodding familiarity with AM.  So, with that kind of logic, even when all the noise is removed (in itself a pipe-dream concept), where is the audience going to be?  


Mark Connelly, WA1ION
South Yarmouth, MA 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Durenberger <Mark4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America <irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; DX @NRC <am@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tue, Mar 22, 2016 8:05 am
Subject: [NRC-AM] Noise Is the Big Problem for AM, SBE Argues

Regulatory relief to knock down noise?  NOT gunna happen, dear friends!  The 
noise is even starting to show up in cheaper FM radios.

Get your DX-ing in while you still can...or better yet, join us in the 
desert :-))


Cheers!

Mark Durenberger, CPBE


-----Original Message----- 
From: Dennis Gibson

http://www.radioworld.com/article/noise-is-the-big-problem-for-am-sbe-argues/278409 

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