FCC to allow All-Digital on AM Band

[RingtailedFox]

Looks like the experiment led by WWFWD (AM 820 Frederick, Virginia) was a success... and definitely interesting enough to have the FCC take a deeper look into it. The FCC has decided to allow for pure-digital on the AM band as a way to potentially revitalize it and perhaps even turn the band back into prime real-estate for broadcasters... at least with higher-fidelity sound (comparable to FM). The FCC acknowledges that the hybrid mode has been a total disaster from interference and making the analog part sound even worse... but that pure-digital could work.

https://www.radioworld.com/tech-and-gea ... Kha0TRYVi4

As for WWFD... it still has analog FM translators (W232DG in Frederick and W252DC in Reston, VA) for those that lack HD Radio recievers...

what are your thoughts, fellow buzzboarders?

[fuzzpower]

How many people listened to the AM digital signal? Can you count it on two hands?

[MWmetalhead]

I think the whole thing is a complete joke and a waste of everyone's time.

Who the hell is gonna waste their purchasing receivers capable of decoding an HD signal when you've already got:
- Analog FM signals offering a bevy of music and in some cases spoken word programming;
- Sirius XM
- Spotify, Pandora, Google Music and Apple Music
- Additional in-home options such as Music Choice and Amazon & Google smart speakers

Many AM stations - especially smaller ones - are run on a shoestring and cater to ethnic minorities, lower income and older individuals. These groups are not going to rush out and buy new radios, and owners are not going to rush out, purchase and install the equipment.

Ya think the Entercoms, iFarts, and Cumuluses of the world are going to run out and flip a bunch of their AM stations to digital only so that they can reach a small fraction of the potential audience those stations currently reach and make those stations completely unusable on 90%+ of receivers currently in use?

It's a cute technology that is completely impractical from a business feasibility point of view. And I don't care how much power the exciter is cranking out - if you have a lot of noise in your home and drive down a "noisy" stretch of road, that digital signal is gonna cut out, period.

[k8jd]

I wonder if there will be any compatability with existing AM HD/FM HD receivers like in most automobiles and trucks built in the last 9 or 10 years ?
Maybe this will wander from mode to mode of un compatble trasnmission types like AM stereo did ?
Sounds like the swamp water is getting deep again !
Another DIGI mess for example, Amateur Radio Digi modes started with RTTY way back in the 50s, now it hs evolved from mechanical devices to computers and there is a new mode FAD jumping up every few months , now dozens of different modes on the air and you have to buy new computer software, and maybe reconfogure hardware , for each one. I am not directly involved with Amateur DIGI modes but try to keep track of developmants.

[innate-in-you]

I wonder if there will be any compatability with existing AM HD/FM HD receivers like in most automobiles and trucks built in the last 9 or 10 years ?
Maybe this will wander from mode to mode of un compatble trasnmission types like AM stereo did ?
Sounds like the swamp water is getting deep again !
Another DIGI mess for example, Amateur Radio Digi modes started with RTTY way back in the 50s, now it hs evolved from mechanical devices to computers and there is a new mode FAD jumping up every few months , now dozens of different modes on the air and you have to buy new computer software, and maybe reconfogure hardware , for each one. I am not directly involved with Amateur DIGI modes but try to keep track of developmants.

Yes, VHF and UHF Amateur activity has dried up, perhaps with the exception of the June and September contests.

It used to be that anyone with 2m or 440Mhz radios could talk to each other. Then they put PL Squelch on every analog repeater input and came out with proprietary, mutually exclusive, digital modes on those digital radios.

Two and 440 are d-e-a-d DEAD!

I still maintain my earlier statement that HD radio for mediumwave was only an afterthought never intended to be a viable medium, rather an answer for MW station owners who asked "What about Us?"

[MWmetalhead]

I wonder if there will be any compatability with existing AM HD/FM HD receivers like in most automobiles and trucks built in the last 9 or 10 years ?

Any HD Radio can pick up digital-only AM.

However, your supposition that "most automobiles and trucks" built in the last 9 or 10 years offer HD Radio as a standard feature is incorrect. 52% of vehicles sold in 2018 come with factory-installed HD Radio receivers. Only 18% of all vehicles on the road feature HD Radio.

http://www.insideradio.com/more-than-ha ... the%20road.

The stupid "happy talk" spin in the above insideradio article makes it seem as if a nationwide cume of 9 million for all HD2, HD3 and HD4 stations is something to celebrate. IT ISN'T!!! Basically, that means only 3 percent of Americans spend any measurable time spent listening to HD-only stations.

What a colossal failure!!! That means a gigantic majority of people with HD-equipped vehicles never tune to the HD-only side channels.

If we assume two people routinely use HD-equipped vehicles, that means only about 8 percent of the people with existing access to such technology utilize it to listen to HD2 / HD3 / HD4 stations in a given week.

In contrast, nearly 35 million satellite radios are in use. If we assume an average of two people listen to a device per week (actual count is higher since many retailers, bars, and even medical offices play satellite radio content to their customers and clients), that means 70 million folks "cume" Sirius XM each week, more than 20 percent of the U.S. population.

Of course, Spotify and Apple Music, being globally available, make even Sirius XM's subscriber count seem unimpressive.

[audiophile]

I have it and almost never use it, because it sounds like a 24k stream. Yuck!

[fuzzpower]

My car is a 2014 model. No HD radio. I don’t plan on shelling out the bucks to upgrade to one.

[WOHO]

Don't kill the AM band with pure digital. Analog AM that can travel hundreds of miles at night when it all hits the fan needs to be kept. IF, and IF, they feel that they MUST have an all-digital AM signa, then limit it to one small section of the band: the X-band from 1610-1710 only. PERIOD. It ain't gonna help.

Still time to send the FCC Comments on this moronic decision?

True about the ham operators.
F-the PL tones and the 'digital format of the month'- just let people hope on 146.94 and shoot the breeze anytime anywhere before the FCC steals the 2 meter and 440 bands from us. Digital doesn't do jack. You WANT people to be able to hear you on a plain old analog scanner, not have to configure color codes, time slots and talkgroup ID's for DMR - just talk in the clear on FM.

[k8jd]

Don't kill the AM band with pure digital. Analog AM that can travel hundreds of miles at night when it all hits the fan needs to be kept. IF, and IF, they feel that they MUST have an all-digital AM signa, then limit it to one small section of the band: the X-band from 1610-1710 only. PERIOD. It ain't gonna help.

Cat walked across my keyboard and wiped out a lengthy comment.

AM nighttime signals could go thousands of miles .That is before the FCC came up with the 750 mile interference Zone for Clear channel stations. Now once you get past 750 miles from the statins you have interference from other stations that were previoulsy not even allowed ay night operation.

One of my favorite stories I tell is about when I lived in Detroit, I had a 1956 Ford car radio set up in my bedroom, I [powered it with a 12 Vac transformer wired across the primary of the vibrator transformer with the vibrator removed, had about 6 ft of wire with one bare end pushed into the antenna socket. One night I found KFI , 640, in LA, coming thru loud and clear. I listened to it until late at night , Great DX bacl in the 60's !

[ftballfan]

Both of the Jeeps I've had (2014 and 2019) have HD AM/FM radio

[Deleted User 14896]

Don't kill the AM band with pure digital. Analog AM that can travel hundreds of miles at night when it all hits the fan needs to be kept. IF, and IF, they feel that they MUST have an all-digital AM signa, then limit it to one small section of the band: the X-band from 1610-1710 only. PERIOD. It ain't gonna help.

I'll admit up front I'm no expert on this sort of thing. But won't digital be heard further?
When TV was analog, you couldn't DX nearly as far as you can now that it's digital. Am I thinking wrong here?

[fuzzpower]

TV DXing was much better in the analog days.

[MWmetalhead]

I'll admit up front I'm no expert on this sort of thing. But won't digital be heard further?
When TV was analog, you couldn't DX nearly as far as you can now that it's digital. Am I thinking wrong here?

Yes. You are wrong on both counts.

[n8fnr]

Another DIGI mess for example, Amateur Radio Digi modes started with RTTY way back in the 50s, now it has evolved from mechanical devices to computers and there is a new mode FAD jumping up every few months , now dozens of different modes on the air and you have to buy new computer software, and maybe reconfigure hardware , for each one. I am not directly involved with Amateur DIGI modes but try to keep track of developments.

Why would you have to buy new software for any ham digi modes except for DMR and D-Star that require you to buy radios for those modes? WSJT is easily the most popular software for HF and is free as are any other modes I can think of. I have been running digi modes for years and have never had to reconfigure any hardware. Hell my rig, a Flex-6400 does not even require an interface.

Zack
N8FNR