"Telamon" wrote in message
...

What do you mean these radios were not meant for this purpose? Are you
turning into a complete nut case?

The radios were designed before HD became a standard. So they were not
designed to receive analog signals when HD was being broadcast
simultaneously, as the design predates HD. Duh.

The FCC did not take your reception of either station into consideration,
as, unless you live right on the ocean, you are outside the contours that
are going to get any protection these days.

Since I live close to the beach I get the best reception but inland
those stations do well on the car radio where I listen to AMBCB most the
time usually. FM reception is not that hot around here with all the
mountains just off the coast. AM usually offers better reception.

Such marginal reception areas outside the primary contours of AMs is exactly
what both the FCC and American broadcasters were willing to sacrifice to get
digital capability. Everything has tradeoffs.

How much more can digital (HD) be allowed to use? It is authorized 24/7
for
AM and FM in the US, and I do not believe that there were more than 24
hours
in the day.

More stations could be using it.

There are perhaps 250 stations in the top 100 markets that warrant use of
HD; the rest are not viable full market signals. And, in that fact, is the
problem with AM today... The better signals were licensed back from the 20's
into the 30's, moved a bit in '28 and after NARBA, but designed to cover
existing 70 to 80 year back population areas. Many growth areas have no good
AMs, many AMs have been outgrown by urban and suburban sprawl, and today's
noise levels all contribute to make most AMs poor HD candidates. The longer
term survival of AM is certainly in doubt when many major markets have less
than 10% of all listening to that band, and most of that in definitely
"senior" demographics.


The digital side bands could be
increased in power or bandwidth.

We can hope the power is eventually raised; on FM there have been studies of
raising the digital signal by as much as 10 db.