That’s right!
And get off my lawn! 
CSA
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OK, back to cars. Someone explain why I can’t get good reception on my car radio for a station 30 miles away, but they come in clearly 200 miles away? Must be a north/south thing versus an east/west deal.
Maybe an up down thing. Is it AM OF FM? The signal might be reflecting off the atmosphere where the temperatures changes substantially, changing atmosphere density.
Yeah AM. No trouble with FM. I think it must have something to do with the way they beam their signal or they changed towers or something I dunno. I can get them in South Dakota or Wisconsin but not southern Minnesota clearly, or at some drive throughs. I used to blame the cell phone tower that went up about 5 years ago so maybe that’s it.
FYI: “The Biebs”, as he likes to be referred to, is a Canadian kid (single mom) who got his start as a YouTube kid. He recorded himself playing songs, don’t know if they were his own compositions or someone elses’, but he got well-known on the 'net and apparently got signed with a promo group who built him into “today’s pop sensation” (as acts used to be promoted.)
He is somewhat talented - not to be compared to Lennon/McCartney, Glimmer Twins (Jagger/Richards) or Stevie Wonder - but his notoriety is mostly his antics, like driving insanely-overpowered cars through rich parts of rich towns and smashing them up. Sort of like James Dean without brains.
Bing, my man, AM is, and always has been, subject to atmospheric variations. Stations carry longer distances during night hours, because the sun limits the signals; once Sol is gone, stuff bounces along the ionosphere, meaning you can clearly hear stations from greater distances at night. CB radio can do that, too, although the range tends to be less because those radios are low power.
In the '70s and '80s, AM stations tried to combat FM growth by developing a method of stereo conversion and transmission to improve the AM sound. Audio frequency response was never as good as FM because of the way the signals are modulated (put on the station’s signal), but the stereo effect was quite good. A number of car factory radios as well as some replacement brands offered the AM stereo capability, although I don’t recall much publicity about it. I am unsure if the stations still use the technology, or if any current receivers,car or otherwise, can process it. (Mono AM was always transmitted along with the stereo signal,)
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He’s a one boy Monkeys of the 21st century I guess. NBC promoted 4 marginally talented hippies into a brief glimpse of stardom using teen magazines. I do recall the line “here in status symbol land” from one of their songs so they did register with me. It was mostly a young female teen who ‘flipped’ over the group. Bubble gum music at its best. Oh yeah those 4 mostly unemployed hippy characters in the tv series somehow had a customized GTO to get the attention of the young male teens.
The time of day has a great deal of influence on AM signals. Most AM stations cut their power significantly at dark. Thirty miles is the approximate planned range on local AM stations but after dark, even at reduced power their signal can travel hundreds of miles. A Del Rio TX station with 500,000 watts could reach virtually from coast to coast at night back in the 1950s playing country music mostly to truckers.
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Didn’t that station have the transmitters across the border in Mexico ?
According to an interview of ZZ Top on VH1 Story Tellers, the song “Jesus Just Left Chicago” was inspired by an evening spent listening to an AM Chicago blues station whose radio waves carried all the way to New Orleans along the atmosphere. That gives you an idea of how far AM radio waves can travel.
I think there was a studio in the US with a U.S. legal transmitter and another transmitter across the border that was much more powerful. I had a friend in Oakland who had worked in radio for many years and knew a lot of interesting trivia.
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I grew up without television but listened to radio and after dark there was a lot to listen to on long winter nights. Beginning soon after dark WLAC Nashville and WDIA Memphis played hard core blues, WWL New Orleans and WLS Chicago played big band music live from the Royal Orleans Hotel and the Roosevelt Hotel. In the summer there were just two local channels that signed off at dark. One played country the other top 40 so I went to bed early.
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I used to listen to WBZ from Boston in DC at night.
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In Minnesota I used to listen to the Little Rock radio station. Can’t remember the call letters anymore but it was a teen station. My current reception issue though is during the day. Night is a toss up.
Tower height, transmitter power, and obstacles are the usual culprit. Not all radio stations transmit at the same power levels. They go from a 10-watt transmitter at a student-run station in California to tens of thousands of watts for the really powerful guys.
And if there’s something between you and the station, like a hill, and the tower isn’t tall enough to give you line-of-sight, you’ll have trouble receiving it.
Car radios (keeping cars in the discussion) and other radios pick up some stations, both AM and FM, farther away than others based on what broadcast power level the individual station is licensed to use. Some are low power that reach limited range and some are high power that can reach quite far range. Most are an average in the mid-range.
Stargazer, I liked your description of “the Biebs”!!!
Re the radio waves, FM also operates in slightly higher frequencies with wavelengths in the 1 meter range, whereas AM operates around the 100 meter wavelength range. The higher frequency is less affected by atmospheric conditions.
50,000 watts of power. Same as what used to be WDGY in the old days and the Little Rock station. Maybe its my TV antenna in my garage attic or something. I dunno but things changed a few years ago.