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New Car Purchase with Upgraded HD Radio

Let us get our terminology correct and reduce some of the confusion. The term "skip", by definition, means ionospheric and would rarely involve the reception of any FM station fewer than say eight hundred miles distant. What you get during temperature inversions, tropospheric ducting, should only be identified as atmospheric refraction, never skip.

Our next lesson will deal with the word, "static" and all of its missuses.
 
ai4i said:
Let us get our terminology correct and reduce some of the confusion. The term "skip", by definition, means ionospheric and would rarely involve the reception of any FM station fewer than say eight hundred miles distant. What you get during temperature inversions, tropospheric ducting, should only be identified as atmospheric refraction, never skip.

Our next lesson will deal with the word, "static" and all of its missuses.
Click to expand...

"FM - No static at all!"
 
It has to be more than one sideband being blocked to thwart HD reception. I've had stations on first adjacents before and still got HD to decode, it just isn't nearly as reliable. Somehow, at least once, I got the HD to decode on a station despite being able to hear two stations either side of it on both adjacents. Where it was pulling that data from, I have no idea, but I got it, subchannels and all..
 
tomservo said:
Hopefully I'm not falling into the confusion trap here but skip on FM definitely affects HD reception in my market. Because we are on the coast it happens quite a lot in the summer.

Just this morning I could not maintain lock on two different broadcasts due to enhanced reception conditions. Stations from Baton Rouge and Lafayette were wiping out more local stations.

It played havoc with RDS decoding as well.

On the positive side, I heard a few stations I'd never heard before and got to listen to WTIX out of New Orleans like it was a local for several hours.
Click to expand...

I had a weird experience happen while listening to KNCQ 97.3 (Redding, CA). I'm about 100+ miles south of Redding, I was doing some FM DX'ing in the car.

At any rate, as I drove around my HD locked and the station went from KNCQ to KLLC 97.3 (San Francisco) HD for about 20 seconds and then back to KNCQ. It was VERY strange. Since KNCQ doesn't run IBOC, I assume KLLC's side-bands were strong enough for my radio to lock and switch to HD. Only problem, it wasn't the HD of the station I was listening to. :)
 
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stewie said:
I had a weird experience happen while listening to KNCQ 97.3 (Redding, CA). I'm about 100+ miles south of Redding, I was doing some FM DX'ing in the car.

At any rate, as I drove around my HD locked and the station went from KNCQ to KLLC 97.3 (San Francisco) HD for about 20 seconds and then back to KNCQ. It was VERY strange. Since KNCQ doesn't run IBOC, I assume KLLC's side-bands were strong enough for my radio to lock and switch to HD. Only problem, it wasn't the HD of the station I was listening to. :)
Click to expand...

I've had that happen with a local LPFM. They picked 103.5, the problem is they are only 22W and there is a monster signal on 103.5 only 150 miles away. Skip is often enough and powerful enough the distant station will override and come in HD. I would say - the LPFM is overridden or seriously degraded about 40% of the time in the mornings. That is a pretty serious percentage of time, and any station that relies on morning drive ratings would be affected negatively.
 
rbrucecarter5 said:
I would say - the LPFM is overridden or seriously degraded about 40% of the time in the mornings. That is a pretty serious percentage of time, and any station that relies on morning drive ratings would be affected negatively.
Click to expand...

Which would not be the case with any LPFM.
 
stewie said:
I had a weird experience happen while listening to KNCQ 97.3 (Redding, CA). I'm about 100+ miles south of Redding, I was doing some FM DX'ing in the car.

At any rate, as I drove around my HD locked and the station went from KNCQ to KLLC 97.3 (San Francisco) HD for about 20 seconds and then back to KNCQ. It was VERY strange. Since KNCQ doesn't run IBOC, I assume KLLC's side-bands were strong enough for my radio to lock and switch to HD. Only problem, it wasn't the HD of the station I was listening to. :)
Click to expand...

I have had this happen, too during tropo. I'm surprised it's so common!
 
tomservo said:
I have had this happen, too during tropo. I'm surprised it's so common!
Click to expand...

Tropo is pretty common with SF stations booming into Sacramento this time of year. This is the first tropo season I've had an HD radio. The FM dial in this market has become more and more crowded in this market.
 
Also, just because the receiver has HD does not mean that it deals any better with intermod products and receiver saturation plus the multipath. In the Buffalo NY area, HD works very well but most FM stations in this area transmit from 1 of 3 areas(North, South, or downtown). If I drive around downtown, the intermod and the high power from the downtown stations wipe out the HD lock and the analog becomes effected too when trying to listen to the other stations North or South of the city. My last Ford HD car radio did better with this than my new Jeep HD. Let's face it, digital is great in many cases but everything must be perfect or else it just does not work right. Analog is much more forgiving of the RF environment.
 
WJPYFM said:
Also, just because the receiver has HD does not mean that it deals any better with intermod products and receiver saturation plus the multipath.
Click to expand...
I have always wondered how well DAB handles reflections and such things.
Depending on the country, it could be on either high VHF (our TV channels 7-13) or "L" band (1.4GHz), and of course, it has no analogue fallback.
 
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ai4i said:
My, how parochial we are!
Yes, it is the primary DAB band in many areas including most of Europe but not the UK or China.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I didn't know. My knowledge of DAB and DAB+ is fairly limited, but every time I've seen frequencies listed it's been in the 220 MHz region. Most of that information must come from the UK.

Truth be told, I wasn't aware China used DAB at all!
 
China may or might not actually have DAB in place, but they plan to use band three, high VHF.
I believe the Republic of Korea also does.
I had a chart that listed the exact channel frequencies for many countries, but could not find it online...it is out there somewhere.
 
The thread is entitled "New car purchase with upgraded HD radio" Does that mean that HD radio has been upgraded? Has the technology itself been upgraded to a close approximation of the reception of maybe the analog FM band? Does it work better than it used to or are they installing Yagi antennas on the roof of the car which would make the title more appropriately called: "New car purchase with upgraded antenna?

I'm listening to Alice's Restaurant on WZLX 100.7 Boston, "home of the HD dropout!" as I write this. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
 
Kelly A said:
Wait, you're listening to HD? It's a miracle!
Click to expand...

Haha! If you were addressing me, no, I listen in glorious analog! I do have one of those good Sony HD tuners, I should dust it off and plug in the old FM Yagi on the roof, WGBH sounds very good in HD (sounds good in analog too though)
 
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