[BC] IBOC Tentatively Identified as Interfering Signal

[Mark Humphrey]

For what it's worth, I've found WPEN's digital coverage very
disappointing along a certain road just 10 miles west of their
transmitter.

WPEN is DA-N, 5 kw, 950 kHz, 82 degree tower (in the daytime) and one
of the best-engineered stations in this market.  The highway is Route
352, north and south of Gradyville, PA, near the left edge of this map
centered at WPEN's daytime site:

http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=39.9744&lon=-75.2719&u=2

The problem is apparently caused by low conductivity, combined with a
noisy 66 kV power line which runs for several miles along this road.
WPEN's predicted field strength should be well above 5 mV/m in this
area, but I get less than 20 % digital reception on a good day.

Is this just a problem with the JVC receiver's AM section, or an
inherent flaw in the AM IBOC system?

Mark


On 8/14/06, Kent Winrich <kwinrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> Come on, arent you overblowing this a tad?
>
> On 8/14/06, WFIFeng at aol.com <WFIFeng at aol.com> wrote:
> >
>
> > Yeah... with 5k wstations getting only a few miles, 50K maybe 10-15 miles?
> > (In the Northeast, anyway. You folks in the south & midwest have vastly
> > superior
> > ground conductivity than we do.)