Best HD radio signal

[charlestondxman]

We don't have that much discussion about HD radio signals here, but it depends on the radio. I got WRVA recently in Virginia Beach on my Kia HD radio. It also came in starting around MM 20 on I-95, and was in starting around MM 30. However the range was much smaller than the regular AM range.

HD radio range in the Charleston area is generally about 30 miles or so, but 102.5 here goes to about Georgetown before it cuts out of HD.

What are HD radio signals like in your area?

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I've done HD AM at about 80 miles on a 10 kW X-band station, but only on stretches of road with absolutely no power lines next to them. Power lines appear to be a limiting factor, whether they have RFI on them or not.

As far as FM in the car, 70 miles under normal conditions, 150 miles with a bit of tropo. I easily do about 250 miles at home with a yagi 30 feet off the ground.

 

[ftballfan]

I just got an Insignia NS-HDRAD on Thursday and I received WGVU-FM's HD radio feed (with subchannels) over by the Grand Rapids airport, which is about 25 miles from WGVU's tower (and they're a Class A!) However, I couldn't get any HD from the Muskegon channels that run it (WSNX, WOOD, WMUS).

 

[charlestondxman]

I've gotten Jacksonville's 102.9 in HD here via tropo.

 

[tomservo]

The performance of HD varies greatly depending on a lot of factors. I've had really good luck with HD in some markets, while others have been dogged by issues. I probably have a worse experience than those with HD built in to their cars because I'm just using the little old Insignia portable with the antenna wire strung up around my car's rearview mirror — hardly an ideal setup, especially for weak FM signals.

As an overall market, the best experiences I had with HD were in St. Louis. I seemed to have dropout-free reception around the entire I-255/I-270 loop, and reasonable reception all the way out west to somewhere around Washington. I think that was around 50 miles, and also the point where the analog signals started to degrade a bit.

I only got about 20-25 miles of good HD reception off most of the stations in Memphis for some reason. WMFS-FM, the local FM sports station, is a class A and their HD only worked inside the I-240 beltway for me. That was only about 5-7 miles from the TX site!

Mississippi's public radio network, MPB Think Radio, is all-HD and they are all pretty solid performers. The station based in Oxford in particular was a standout, with reception from Memphis' southern suburbs all the way south past Grenada possible along I-55, with very few interruptions. Their Biloxi repeater's HD reaches Mobile's western suburbs somewhat reliably, and I think that's again around 50 miles from the TX site. I'm sure with a decent car HD radio it would be a viable option that far out.

Here in my home market of Mobile & Pensacola, it's nice and flat so the HD signals can be received for a good 50+ miles, but they are very spotty when moving for me since the little Insignia is prone to RF overload. None of them are solid on the go except WKSJ, which is running higher power and has a real observable coverage difference compared to the lower powered HD stations. All but one of the HD stations in this market are the full 100 kW, often at 1300-1700 feet HAAT. Pensacola's pubcaster WUWF also probably operates at higher HD power, as it is the only solid HD one can receive in that city.

Up in Montgomery, Alabama, the HD signals don't have much reach (Montgomery is in a bit of a bowl, geographically, so that limits lower powered signals from really getting out) but they are absolutely solid in-town. Not that it matters, as most of the HD content is repeated on translators. There's 12 active translators in the market and four repeat HD subchannels. The translators have about the same range as the HD signals, since they all originate from lower-powered stations. Alabama State's WVAS is 100 kW from a stick right in the city and their HD doesn't get out any better than the smaller stations. Maybe 10 miles max before the dropouts get to be a problem.

Birmingham is the worst HD market I've heard. I don't know if it's the hilly, iron-rich mountainous terrain or the HD stations there are just poorly sited, but I have never had solid reception of any of them for more than 30 seconds, no matter which station at what power. Maybe it's RF overload on the little Insignia's part. But for whatever reason, I couldn't hold an HD station there for a minute to save my life, even when within eyesight of the main TX towers. Not that it matters much: Like Montgomery, most of what's on the subchannels is repeated on translators, some running 250 watts from well over 900 feet HAAT, so they're like little Class A's on their own. Of the 12 (yes, twelve) active translators in the metro area, 7 relay HD subchannels.

Another market I recall being poor for HD was Albuquerque. You'd think with everything being beamed down from high atop Sandia it'd be ideal since the entire metro is line of sight to the mountain, but I had nothing but trouble there. One oddity that stood out was (IIRC) KZRR at 94.1. I had great HD reception EAST of Sandia in the rural middle of nowhere for a good 50 miles, but once I crossed into the city, it was gone. A week prior, I logged that exact same station, in full HD, in central Mississippi during intense skip. So I can honestly say I got good HD from them from Mississippi but bupkis in ABQ itself, lol.

 

[charlestondxman]

Charleston only has 6 HD FMs out of 24 in the market, and one has a HD2 with a 250 watt translator. They are easily listenable in almost all the parts of the Charleston area we've driven in. Washington's HD FMs have good range, but only out to Quantico or so.

The big New York AMs running HD (WCBS and WOR) have good range. You can hear them all the way down to about I-195 well before they quickly cut into analog.

 

[tylerSC]

The major AMs in the Southeast region, 11.10-WBT Charlotte and 750-WSB Atlanta, do not transmit an HD Radio signal. Supposedly due to technical reasons, I am not sure. But I will say that 700-WLW Cincinatti has a very good AM HD signal.

 

[tylerSC]

And several of the Charlotte FM HD signals seem to be strong. I get 95.1, 96.1, 101.9, 102.9, 105.3, and 107.9 with rabbit ears in the house at 75 miles, in Greenville, SC. But in the car, they drop in and out, although 107.9 holds on the best. In the car, they maintain a lock as far as Spartanburg, which is about 50-55 miles. And the GSP/Asheville signals seem strong as well, stretching from Georgia into NC. Especially 99.9, 106.9, followed by 93.7, 98.9, and 102.5. But I wonder if any of these HD signals are at full power, or have been allowed to increase power? I do know 107.9-WLNK Charlotte recently increased power on their HD signal.

 

[diymedia]

In a Radio World white paper, Clear Channel's Alan Jurison exec laid some of the blame for weak HD reception on automakers sacrificing reception for design aesthetics. Sounds like they're laying the groundwork to ask the FCC for a blanket -10dB power increase for FM-HD.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I think most of the increased reception with rabbit ears comes because the elements are longer than standard 31 inches. I've always found 5/8 wavelength does much better for DX'ing than 1/4 wavelength. Add to that strange reflections and node locations and the ability to rotate things around a bit and you have a lot of advantages. In a car, I bottom load a long whip element to help both AM and FM. I get electrically close to 1/20 wavelength of AM to get some efficiency on AM, while at the same time I get 5/8 wavelength on FM which does really well in the fringes.

 

[tomservo]

In a Radio World white paper, Clear Channel's Alan Jurison exec laid some of the blame for weak HD reception on automakers sacrificing reception for design aesthetics. Sounds like they're laying the groundwork to ask the FCC for a blanket -10dB power increase for FM-HD.

I've been in a lot of new cars lately and couldn't tell you the last time I heard good analog stereo on FM or wide fidelity on AM in a car, to be honest. I think radio in general is being neglected in New cars.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

In a Radio World white paper, Clear Channel's Alan Jurison exec laid some of the blame for weak HD reception on automakers sacrificing reception for design aesthetics. Sounds like they're laying the groundwork to ask the FCC for a blanket -10dB power increase for FM-HD.

The trouble is - when you get picket fencing out in the fringes of reception, the signal varies by a lot more than 10 dB. Given the lock time of HD, a paltry 10 dB increase is nothing. It will hardly be noticeable. What will be noticeable to a large number of listeners is the increase in noise floor on the analog signal due to self jamming that happens from the increased sideband levels. It is annoying.

 

[K6JHU]

Catching up on this thread ... "Another market I recall being poor for HD was Albuquerque. You'd think with everything being beamed down from high atop Sandia it'd be ideal since the entire metro is line of sight to the mountain, but I had nothing but trouble there."

This issue in ABQ is that there are a lot (even more than Mt. Wilson I suspect) beaming down from Sandia. My problem with HD reception was front end overload from all the signals. Made hash of HD. My solution was a new receiver with a better from end.

Also, while you can get reception 50 miles out to the east, there is an area on I-40 from Carnuel to Edgewood that has the Sandia's blocking almost all FM completely. And that just happens to be the area I go through on a regular basis

 

[tomservo]

The trouble is - when you get picket fencing out in the fringes of reception, the signal varies by a lot more than 10 dB. Given the lock time of HD, a paltry 10 dB increase is nothing. It will hardly be noticeable. What will be noticeable to a large number of listeners is the increase in noise floor on the analog signal due to self jamming that happens from the increased sideband levels. It is annoying.

My experience has been different. The fringes are always going to be hopeless territory for HD, which is why I reckon automakers insist on radios having an HD-defeat button for those people in that situation. But the boost in power does affect more local reception, by making it more robust and less dropout prone. That has been my experience with the two known higher power HD signals in my area.

When WUWF raised their power (I don't think it was a 10 dB boost, though) the fringe area where I live did not improve, but once I got past the magical mystical 60 dBu barrier it got rock solid, versus the occasional dropouts I'd experience until I was within 20 miles or so of the TX site. WKSJ has been an even bigger gain. In that station's case, there's been a noticeable extension of their viable HD service area as compared to the co-located HD stations running lower power. 'KSJ's HD is so strong that I don't experience dropouts due to front end over load near the towers and I don't experience the constant in-and-out when I'm ~30+ miles out like I do with the other stations. So it does make at least some difference.

Also, I do not hear any degradation of the analog signals on either of these stations. None of my radios seem to have self-interference from HD issues.

Catching up on this thread ... "Another market I recall being poor for HD was Albuquerque. You'd think with everything being beamed down from high atop Sandia it'd be ideal since the entire metro is line of sight to the mountain, but I had nothing but trouble there."

This issue in ABQ is that there are a lot (even more than Mt. Wilson I suspect) beaming down from Sandia. My problem with HD reception was front end overload from all the signals. Made hash of HD. My solution was a new receiver with a better from end.

Also, while you can get reception 50 miles out to the east, there is an area on I-40 from Carnuel to Edgewood that has the Sandia's blocking almost all FM completely. And that just happens to be the area I go through on a regular basis

Ah, that explains it. Thank you. That does make sense. I have the same issue, to a smaller degree, in my market, where a dozen class C FMs are more or less co-located with the market's dozen full power (1 MW) DTV stations. The little Insignia portable doesn't hold up well at all to all that energy.

 

[ftballfan]

There aren't any locals running HD, but my Insignia tabletop HD radio can usually pick up WPNE's HD at 84 miles. Sometines WHDI can come in HD at 78 miles. Once I did get WMBI's HD feeds from Chicago, which is 181 miles!

 

[rbrucecarter5]

My experience has been different. The fringes are always going to be hopeless territory for HD, which is why I reckon automakers insist on radios having an HD-defeat button for those people in that situation. But the boost in power does affect more local reception, by making it more robust and less dropout prone. That has been my experience with the two known higher power HD signals in my area.

There may be a few situations where it helps. Frankly - I think the biggest enemy of HD radio is multiple bay antennas in use by almost every radio station in the country. In the fringes, they create moire patterns of coverage and the picket fencing people experience while driving. It also explains why some HD fans like rabbit ears - because they can find those little micro nodes of the moire pattern. I know about the moire patterns, because of the mood swings of a severely diabetic station owner at WAPN. Always trying to maximize his tiny station's coverage, one day on a whim, he bought an old 6 kW tube transmitter, and ran it into a single bay. With transmission line losses and single bay efficiency, he was right at his licensed power of 2.2 kW. A strange thing happened! He got his coverage all right. But in the fringes - there was absolutely NO picket fencing! The signal was all there, or all gone. I know, because my company had me doing drive tests on a pager signal we were piggy backing on his RDS. It was like falling off a cliff. His little experiment was short lived - one look at his electric bill and he was back to his good old reliable 900 W solid state transmitter and multiple bays. It was only 1800 W, but his electric bill was much more managable. The picket fencing was back. The worst picket fencing I have ever heard is on Roswell, NM stations. If you drive out West of town, every little ridge has another short tower, each of which has a ridiculous number of bays up the whole height of the tower. Picket fencing is so severe I doubt HD would work on any of them. That paltry 10 dB power increase might help in some situations where there are micro nulls. But under bridges and overpasses, or near airports where flight patterns make signals vary by decades - no. I've heard of people ten miles from full class C HD stations - 100 kW on 2000 foot towers, flat terrain that cannot get reliable HD at all because every time a plane takes off or lands the signal varies so much they continually lose lock. And that carves out quite a wedge shaped swath of land over Dallas and Houston, probably LA, Denver and a lot of other metro areas as well. Maybe multiple wedge shaped swaths depending on prevailing wind direction, with signals varying by 60 dB. 10 dB will do nothing to help. Badly engineered system, because the lock time is way too long. And HD-2, about its only saving grace, goes dead silent for at least 5 to 10 seconds when lock is lost.

 

[tomservo]

I live in an area with as much or more air traffic and as of those big cities, yet I seem have zero of the dropout issues related to airplanes that you seem to notice.

Not only am I halfway between two regional commercial airports, I'm half a mile from my town's local airport, the airfield where a banner-plane operates (flies ads over the beaches), two Navy Outlying fields where pilots train takeoffs and landings all day and sometimes all night, and within a half hour of a major naval air station and all its associated activity.

This is truly the most dense airspace I've lived under. From the 7 am cropduster who flies just a hundred feet over my house every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to NOLF training pilots who do takeoff and landings all day to my east, to the loops they practice in air directly above, to the regular private small planes and exec jets that fly to the beach, to the occasional Blue Angel… it is active. And here at home, with a slightly beyond the line of sight view to the towers, I never get dropoffs like you describe.

The Clear Channel stations' HD1s DO drop in and out on one of my radios, but it seems to be a software issue. The HD2s don't do that and the Cumulus HD stations also don't do that. My logging point in Pensacola is at the mall, which is in the landing path of the Pensacola Regional Airport… even with planes so close I feel I could reach up and tickle their underbellies, I don't get dropouts on the only real local HD, WUWF, which runs higher power. And their tower is several miles away and practically below ground level from that location.

Edit to add: It's 7:27 and Friday and right after I hit post, the cropduster flew over. I did not lose my HD signal.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I live in an area with as much or more air traffic and as of those big cities, yet I seem have zero of the dropout issues related to airplanes that you seem to notice.

The wedge may be fairly narrow. My own HD coverage test was 70 miles from the Dallas towers on highway 75 near Sherman, TX. I could see the planes in the distance approaching DFW, but I was not under them. I had perfect HD decode on all DFW stations. But that brings up another point - I was 70 miles from the towers with nothing but a dipole on a table top. There were cows in the fields and occasional farm houses. The metro area had ended 15 or 20 miles to the South. Why the heck is a power increase necessary? To cover even more cows? Its not like they have headsets connected to HD radios so they can produce more milk or something ----

 

[Chuck]

In recently purchased a new 2014 Chrysler Town & Country. It has their top of the line "infotainment" center. It has an amazingly good sounding radio. Even AM sounds pretty good and it effortlessly streams audio off of my cell phone. Missing is HD. It's not to be found anywhere....

 

[KB1OKL]

In recently purchased a new 2014 Chrysler Town & Country. It has their top of the line "infotainment" center. It has an amazingly good sounding radio. Even AM sounds pretty good and it effortlessly streams audio off of my cell phone. Missing is HD. It's not to be found anywhere....

Chrysler was always known for their engineering, probably didn't want to ruin their good rep.