I had an opportunity to listen to WKMI today. My wife left me in her
car for a minute while she ran into a store to pick up something. The
fact that the minute turned out to be an hour is immaterial to this
discussion She has a 2002 car with a Bose audio system so it's
capable of good quality. We were within the WKMI 2 mv/m contour in a
quiet (RF wise) location in which I was able to listen to a 1 kw AM
station about 20 miles away with a good signal. I listened to all the
AM stations in the market and WKMI sounded to me like either something
was being over driven or more likely the RF final (if they still have a
plate modulated transmitter) is soft and they are pushing it hard to get
power output.

But then again (if it is plate modulated) it could be a really sick tube
in the modulator section. Listening to adjacent channels I do not
believe that they are running IBOC.
I'm going to have to do some checking next week to figure this out.
Unless they are waiting for parts I can't believe anyone would let this
go like it is for long.

Chuck

Mark Roberts wrote:

Has anyone thought to test on car radios? It's my observation that
the average car radio on AM has more sensitivity and (sometimes) wider
bandwidth than the average home unit. That, to me, would seem to be
the acid test.

Most of the stuff you can get in a Target or Mall-Wart for home
use is pretty junky. A Zenith Circle-of-Sound clock radio from the
1970s will run circles around anything for home use today.
(I miss Zenith in a curious kind of way.) The best recent unit that
I have is a Cambridge Sound Works Model 88 from 2001. It seems fully
NSRC compliant. The two music stations on AM that I could stand to
listen to for extended periods, KFRC (oldies) and KMZT (classical)
sound reasonably good -- not quite FM, but better than almost any
AM. It's a little weak as far as sensitivity goes, though.

| The only thing that IBOC requires is a narrower analog bandwidth. The
| processing stays the same, and most radios sound identical as they have
| limited bandwidth to begin with.

But then there is the interference. Electrical interference on AM is
bad enough as it is.