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mrtejano
Guest
So even though this station is in Houston in downtown with 99 W it is still being overlap by 104.5 San Antonio
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San Antonio stations and KBPA were alive and kicking on my drive down 45 from the North Loop to Downtown.
Mr. Tejano, if you want HD radio in the car, I recommend an in-dash car stereo or an add-on tuner if your car stereo supports it. From the "big" full power stations, you will reliably receive HD radio for 60 mile radius and it can be up to 80 miles if there aren't any interference issues from another station. From the Missouri City 'sticks', my experience from an in-dash car stereo is the HD radio service area is approximately from Columbus to Winnie and down to Galveston. Up north, they start to fade right before Huntsville. As expected, lower power stations like KAMA have a shorter HD range (about 30 miles).
Mr. Tejano, if you want HD radio in the car, I recommend an in-dash car stereo or an add-on tuner if your car stereo supports it. From the "big" full power stations, you will reliably receive HD radio for 60 mile radius and it can be up to 80 miles if there aren't any interference issues from another station. From the Missouri City 'sticks', my experience from an in-dash car stereo is the HD radio service area is approximately from Columbus to Winnie and down to Galveston. Up north, they start to fade right before Huntsville. As expected, lower power stations like KAMA have a shorter HD range (about 30 miles).
I can't imagine that a shark fin antenna would be very effective for FM and definitely not effective for AM frequencies. They were originally designed for UHF wireless systems.
Actually, I do get those ranges with a 'shark fin' antenna. 2014 Infiniti Q50 factory stereo (HD is standard).
Frank, most of our class C stations here are ~100kw @ ~585m so they travel quite far, given our very flat terrain, about to the 55 dBu analog coverage.
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rbrucecarter5
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If you take a chance and use a high gain RF FET without ESD protection, you can get a lot of broadband gain with very low noise. I did that with wireless keyboard and mice dongle designs - I could get 20 or 30 feet with just a coil of wire stuffed in the dongle. I imagine they are doing something similar in the shark fins, and it probably works well enough. But the down side of it is - there is no protection. ESD is going to take it out, or in the case of a car, lightning. I think they are banking on the fact that nobody is going to disassemble the shark fin and zap it with the ESD on their finger, or that they probably won't be in a lightning storm. Even if they are, the failure mode is shorted, so all that goes away is the gain and the radio will still work - at reduced sensitivity. Most people won't notice the difference because they aren't DX'ing. Of course HD, with its reduced range, will be affected more than analog, but most people don't care about HD anyway. So the car dealer demonstrates a radio with a shark fin that works as well as a whip - at least until the first close by lightning strike - and the car radio will even work afterward. But by that time the warranty has expired for the car, and they count on nobody knowing the difference. I know of no other way a shark fin could work - even if they put a fractal antenna in there for FM, there are no fractal antennas for AM that would fit.
If ever. I just don't see it. What's on 107.5 HD-2 is about as good as it's going to get.
Wouldn't those 3 happen to be KHMX, KKHH, and KILT? I agree their signals are solid--before the upgrade, along with the other Senior Road stations, they would drop out in the lower levels of my work parking garage in downtown. Since the upgrade, these stay locked on. The difference is very noticeable.
Yes, those three.
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