What happened to Car Radio Antennas?

Yes, it is unloading right now. Then it will go on to the Felixstowe (UK) to offload the remaining containers and then it will dock for repairs.

Reply to
Rob
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Yes, MW is the 531-1602 kHz band (9 kHz raster) but we also had a LW band 153-279 kHz, I think that is not used for broadcast in the US.

The stations were dropped because this is an inefficient way of transmitting that has been replaced by FM, DAB+, mobile streaming via 4G/5G, etc.

Energy is expensive here and a typical radio station cannot pay the 100kW-1MW power consumption of an AM transmitter.

Reply to
Rob

Maybe in the USA? Here we have/had at least two bands with AM broadcasting:

LW 153-279 kHz MW 531-1602 kHz

And then of course there are various SW bands, e.g. the 49M band.

Reply to
Rob

That is my feelings also. I am not going to pay for satellite radio in a car. Partly because I am not in the car enough to get much out of it.

I am not sure if I even have an AM radio in the house. I don't listen to the FM stations either in the house. I use either the CD or USB depending on the car to listen to music or other things.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

As far as I know in the US the only bands for commercial radio has been the frequency ranges of about 530 to 1700 KHz for AM and 88 to 107 MHz for FM. Most radios will have only those 2 ranges on them that are common . I know there are many that will have the short wave that ranges from about 1.8 to 30 MHz on them but they are mostly imported portable sets.

The US has never used the LW range of anything below about 530 KHz for commercial transmtting.

The US did sponsor some Voice of America stations in the short wave bands but they were mainly made to transmit to foreign countries.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

Ok so in Europe that is completely different and in many countries any radio that has MW would also have LW. Not all countries had active transmitters there, or had them only for a limited time, so e.g. here in the Netherlands you could find radios that have only MW. But I have a French car and in France there are several LW transmitters (or at least, there were). They tend to have a longer range and are less affected by propagation changes. And of course they often use ridiculous amounts of power and large antennas. A wellknown LW transmitter in Warsaw, Poland had a half-wave vertical. (646.38 metres or 2,120.7 ft). It collapsed during maintenance work.

Back in the days, the Netherlands had such a network as well. Transmitters in 3 locations around the world sending information in many languages, targeted to countries without or with unbalanced information on radio.

But it has long been discontinued. Too costly, and replaced by Internet.

Reply to
Rob

The US AM band of about 550 to 1700 KHz had lots of transmitters ranging from about 250 watts to maybe 2000 watts. Many towns of populations of

30,000 or more peope often had atleast one and some two. The local town to me had two. One was a 250 watt station and had a single antenna. The other was a 1000 watt station and had 3 antennas about 50 or so meters apart. During the day they broadcast with a directional patern that was a circle. During the night they switched to a patern that was mostly north and south. Those antennas were vertical towers that are about 90 meters or so high depending on the frequency.

During the day the AM stations usually covered from 10 to maybe 100 miles. At night they covered several thousand miles if ran at full power so that is why they switched to a north/south directonal patern.

One of the larger towns had a transmitte that was 50,000 watts . I think that is the most they could use and were called clear chanel stations. There were only a small number of themin the US. I think that at night they had to beam north and south.

Now many of the AM stations are off the air. Some had an AM and FM transmitter and quit the AM and went totally to FM.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

In Europe, broadcasting has traditionally been a state thing, and a country had about 3 to 5 different programmes (even less early on) that were transmitted by several transmitters in parallel to cover the entire country. Depending on its size, that could be done with one or two MW transmitter sites (as in a small country like the Netherlands) or a larger number of sites. A single LW transmitter could cover a larger country like France which is about the size of a smaller American state, so that could be considered an alternative. Such transmitters typically ran 500,000 watts, or even 2,000,000 watts as in the case of the LW transmitter in Poland. But that covered all of Europe, some sources say the entire world (but I think it is not likely that it covered all of the world all of the time).

When FM was first deployed, it merely transmitted the same programmes as the LW/MW transmitters but of course with many more sites to achieve the required coverage. Once the deployment was complete and the listeners widely got the required receiver equipment, the linking was no longer done and the number of programmes doubled.

For a long time it was claimed that independent radio stations would not fit in the rigid frequency allocation plans made across countries to guarantee interference-free reception for everyone. Frequencies were re-used only over very long distances. Conferences were held every couple of years to adjust the allocations, and countries were proud when they were able to score a new MW frequency or a number of FM frequencies as required to deploy a new FM network for a single programme.

Only much later this was all relaxed, and local and independent stations were able to bid for frequencies. And now, all the stations that were on MW have ceased transmitting there and have moved on to DAB+ on VHF or sometimes to FM as well. And the plans to stop using FM are on the horizon (some countries have already terminated FM broadcast).

Reply to
Rob

In the US just about anyone with the money could put up an AM or FM radio station that wanted to. Provided there was radio spectrum space for them to do it. All the government did was say yes or no to the station and make sure they follow the rules as to the operation of the sttion. For the most part every station did their own programming. So as you tune across the AM band you almost never heard the same thing on different stations unless several were carring the same sports program.

I could see the probelm of Europe where there are many countries trying to control the radio stations and Spectrum usage.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

Yes, it was "the same" here. Anyone with the money could ask the government for spectrum space. But the government always said NO. Not possible. That brought some people with money to absolute despair, and lead to pirate stations, e.g. on ships. In procedures against those, it was always claimed that the frequency they used was not available, because it was allocated to someone else. Which of course it was, 1000 miles away.

Yes, part of the problem was the many countries who all of course wanted to have their say in the matter, all wanted to have frequencies allocated, and all wanted to operate without interference. And of course the fact that they were different countries and not states of the same country made them less willing to compromise, and the regulating body tended to over-regulate.

Reply to
Rob

Rob is Such a Tedious Wanker wrote: ================================

** FFS asshole - learn to read.

What does " reserved " mean ????????

FYI

names mean what people mean when they use them.

Only dumb, ASD sufferers treat words as if they are math.

...... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

I regularly listen to music via the internet or saved on my computer at home. I have plenty of AM tuners; I really should get back into listening to long distance AM at night.

Reply to
Michael Trew

I'm sure the efficiency of those stations in that band would be the same in the US as Europe; I find it interesting that they can still hang on and be profitable (for the most part) over here.

How much more expensive is your electric? I pay $0.05/kWh -- although electric is fairly cheap here. Parts of the US average roughly 3 times that at about $0.15/kWh. Of course, that's just the "supply" portion; there is a rate charged for "delivery" on our bills that changes with the cost of supply. My current bill is $45.30 -- supply is 261 kWh @ $13.81 with "delivery" costing $31.49.

Reply to
Michael Trew

I find these difference in broadcasting quite interesting, and I concur with the majority of what Ralph has said about US radio.

Thank you for sharing!

Reply to
Michael Trew

Hey dumbfuck! Maybe you can consider that:

- English is not my native language

- The world is not limited to the USA, the USA is only a small part of the world. AND it is becoming more insignificant by the day.

- The statements I made about AM broadcasting are true.

Reply to
Rob

Well, of course it is difficult to know what kWh prices a broadcasting station pays, because they would have a different contract than a consumer. It would not be the lowest possible rate, because likely they want 24h/day service (unless they have a local generator they can use on a daily basis). Large users that can switch off during peak hours pay less per kWh.

As a consumer, I pay a kWh rate for supply and for delivery (separate), plus a fixed rate for connection, and energy taxes over the whole thing. Because energy taxes have a fixed basic allowance deducted after calculating the percentage, it is difficult to give a total kWh price because what I pay for my energy is different from what I pay for an extra kWh on top. It is set up this way to encourage people to save energy. What I pay over an entire year is about 0.09 euro/kWh but the price for an extra kWh is more like 0.20 euro/kWh. A euro is about $1.20 so it is like $0.11 and $0.24

But again, that is not what a customer with 1MW load would pay.

Reply to
Rob

My memory is that they had to cut power to 10% at night.

Reply to
Tim R

Fair enough, thanks!

Reply to
Michael Trew

Hokey.

Imbeded antennas introduced minimal added cost and had zero moving parts.

RL

Reply to
legg

And here, in the 'Great, Salty, Frozen North', power antennas had a typical service life of about 3 years, at best. No big deal for the car flippers, but for those of us who keep cars well into their second centennial (in tho usands), or longer, an issue.

Keep in mind that (at least) here in the US, all windshields are laminated, some even have three (3) layers. Many have embedded sensor shields and sun shields , as well as various degrees of tinting. Adding an antenna or even antennas has a tiny incremental cost to all that. Our Volvo XC70 had an a ntenna on the perimeter of the windshield - in the glue-zone, one on the dr iver (left) side rear window, and one on the rear window (tailgate). No sha rk-fin, but as a 2005, Navigation was not as prevalent then as now. The sy stem consists of a radio with integrated CD changer and Dolby Pro Logic1 pr ocessor that runs a powerful, 300 Watt amplifier, which in turn runs 11 (V7

0, V70 R, XC70), 13 (S60 S60 R) or 9 (S80) speakers (from the brochure).

The antenna on the rear passenger window, I am told, was a passive radiator for cell phones. Never took the time to check that.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

Reply to
Peter W.

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