GOODBYE AM?

[Sean Sheedy]

I miss the clear channel high power AM stations. My interest in radio was spurred in no small part, when I was a kid, on a New Years Eve on the deck of my parents' house in California, holding a small pocket transistor radio.  I heard the ball drop in New York, then the celebration in Chicago, then Salt Lake City, then Los Angeles, over the course of three hours.  Later I took a big road trip with my dad, and we got quite a chuckle listening to the reports of traffic on the LA freeways while driving on a two lane highway in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming late in the evening.

Sean AI4ID

bbruhns at erols.com wrote:

>Most AM broadcast stations use a 1/4 wave vertical antenna or antenna array, and very often the antennas are actually top-loaded units that are shorter than 1/4 wavelength, but AM 740 from Toronto uses a full 1/2 wavelength vertical antenna.  There is a station on 860 KHz that also uses the same antenna, as a 5/8 wave (approximately) vertical at that frequency.  Frequency-selective coupling allows both transmitters to feed the single antenna.
>
>I have to think that something about the 1/2 wave antenna works especially well at great distances - maybe it is because it has more low-angle focus. That 740 KHz station comes in very well in the Washington DC area at night.
>
>   Bob, WA3WDR
>
>Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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