Saturday, September 13, 2014

Fall Season, 2014

Friends,

I must apologize for no blog posts this last year. I have gotten away from the writing due to other outside activities beyond radio, but perhaps will do some this fall or winter.

Getting ready for another cross country trip again (east coast to west coast), and will be taking the radios with me, as always. Will try to make some notes on any interesting receptions.

Have bought a Radio Shack 20-629 synthesized world AM/FM/SW receiver (PL-505 clone) over the summer and have been enjoying it very much. It has characteristics much like the Tecsun PL-600. It is a fun radio to use.

In other news, I've been working on mapping nighttime signal patterns over the last year and other program coding for the FCC database. I also have the full Industry Canada AM database unpacked and coded, which allows complete daytime and nighttime pattern maps. I am getting close on the skywave coding, and will shoot for some downloadable files on this blog in the next few months, as well as a groundwave pattern update.

The latest run on the FCC database, dated today, 09-13-2104, shows:

US Mediumwave:
4710 facilities. (FCC indicates 4715, though 5 of these are officially deleted entries).
300 facilities registered to transmit IBOC digital.
94 facilities are silent.

The latest run on the Industry Canada database, dated today, 09-13-2104, shows:

Canada Mediumwave:
161 facilities. 14 more (making 175 total) are listed as provisional and may or may not be operational.

More to come.

Take care and good DX to all,

Bill
RADIO-TIMETRAVELLER

WWL-870 nighttime (50 KW) and its competition to fringe .15 mV/m 50% signal probability