AM vs FM Radio Waves ?? 😲 w/ Neil deGrasse Tyson

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[davidcanady]

As a kid in the 70s, I loved listening to AM at night when we were the south. You could get stations from all over the place.

[ModestNeophyte]

i checked out an am station, wqxl, about volunteering for them and i learned that they had to power down their broadcast antenna at night to 5 watts, because if they didnt they would illegally step on other licensed stations after dark.

[patrickc]

I loved when I was a kid and we got my Grandparents huge old vacuum tube radio. That thing was so neat. It was like a 3 feet wide and 4 1/2 feet tall beautiful wood cabinet. Nothing was quite like turning it on and listening to it hum as the tubes warmed up.

It was mostly just a sentimental family heirloom that never got used, but some nights we would turn it on and see what we could get. We were even picking up stations from Europe on what I am guessing was short wave. As a kid I would try to figure out what language it was and where it was coming from.

[DrikoMaritz]

And before AM we had Short wave. We received the Voice of America in South Africa.

[mikehoncho]

It has nothing to do with the modulation (AM or FM) but instead that the stations that broadcast AM transmit in the High Frequency/ Medium Frequency ranges which has the ability to refract off the E and F regions of the ionosphere. FM stations transmit in the Very High Frequency range and has a much smaller wave size, so it just penetrates through. Unless during very rare and specific ionospheric events

[chrismcnutt]

700wlw in Cincinnati used to be 700, 000 watts. It resulted in Reds fans from California to Cuba because they could listen to the broadcast

[s.g.r.]

It was cool listening to stations half a continent away.

[kreuner]

This is mostly caused not by the modulation of the waves but by the low frequency of AM

[mightythimble]

I'm 39 years old and just got called an 'old timer' by 65 year old Niel deGrasse Tyson.

[billwilson-esyn]

An older neighbor kid said they could pull in WLS in Chicago when stationed in South Vietnam's Highlands.

[artmoss]

Another reason for being able to hear distant station is that some stations were allowed to increase their power, going up to 50, 000 watts or more.

[michaeledmonson]

I used to listen to Mystery Theater because of "skipping" waves . 😁👌

[kunalsinghsolanki]

Being in India, my grandfather had a very old Panasonic radio, which used to get signal from almost all of Asia, he used to listen BBC in 3 languages, Hindi (India), Urdu (Pakistan) & English (UK).

[brettcrowson]

Dr. Tyson always makes me smile...being an "old timer", I can remember my communication days in the USAF. Folks nowadays, heads would explode if we tried to explain things like upper/lower sidebands...carrier waves, etc... Truth be known...communication "analog style" was better. Not faster...just better.

[stevenreneau]

In the 60s, we listened to WLS (Chicago) in East Texas.

[pourattitude]

Old timer here. Yes, AM radio did in fact come in better after dark, but not RIGHT after dark. You needed to constantly retune the station from an hour before dark to an hour after dark (vice-versa if driving home from a graveyard shift). Probably related to what Tyson said, I'm guessing, but all us old timers know this. What kinda sucked was needing to adjust your AM radio presets between night and day too, if you had the time to do it before you got into traffic. Otherwise you fine-tuned while you drove. 😅
Edit: I wish so much that I could post a pic here of an older car radio, just to see how many people could guess right how we used to set stations and how we fine-tuned stations. Depending on the car make and model and year, a stock radio preset might have jumped around so much that changing presets was so much of a chore that you just resigned yourself to always needing to fine-tune AM.😂

[Swimdeep]

Talking “skip” on my old home base CB radio was a thing. Could reach and communicate with other CBers hundreds and thousands of miles away. As a teenager, it was exciting to talk to someone across country when normal range was about 20 miles.

[larrysorenson]

I used to drive at night from Phoenix to LA. I enjoyed the Navajo AM station as well as one from Las Vegas.

[rikerD]

West German here: In my youth in the 1980s, when I turned the dial on my grandad's ancient Telefunken AM and LW radio at night and very carefully moved the knob to the far left or far right of the dial, I could sometimes hear numbers being broadcast. Just numbers in blocks for minutes. Sometimes women, mostly men. Or Morse code. That was also the reason why I learnt Morse code, but even then it was just numbers divided into blocks. Very scary, but I was fascinated by it. Today, of course, I know what I and many others were able to listen to. What radio today still has LW and AM band reception in addition to FM? Even I only have DAB radios at home and in the car.

[joshmandeville]

Years ago my dad used to listen to the san Diego chargers radio late at night while we were living 7-8 hours away. Was pretty fun