ESPN 1000 works all the way in........

[joeynach]

Nashville, Tenessee! I noticed this over spring break when i was driving to florida. For some reason or another all the chicago AM stations come in perfectly in the Nashville Metro area. As soon as we got further outside nashville, both towards chicago and away from, the signal faded away. Why does AM chicago radio work in Nashville?

Im not sure exactly why, but we know that AM stands for amplitude modulation. Amplitude would be the height of the wave on a graph along the y axis. The only explanantion i can come up with is that since the signal is sinusodal it bounces back and forth off the ground and upper atmosphere at certain distances (height on the y axis) from the source. Maybe nashville is at some equal latitiude or longtitued or something lines up for this, i dont know. Any suggestions?

[adsit]

You're on the right track. As solar and atmospheric conditions vary, so do the "hops" an AM signal takes. Could be that Nashville's in a good spot now, but over a period of time, that signal quality can change. Other factors, such as ground clutter from mountains, buildings, etc. also have an affect, as does interference from other stations on or near the frequency. A handful of Chicago stations (including AM1000) are clear-channel, which means they're the only ones broadcasting on their channel at night when conditions are best for long-distance listening.

Used to be important to have these powerful stations, when there wasn't quite so many stations on the air... in some parts of the country, faraway big-city radio was the only radio you could get.

In New England, the Chicago clear-channels get "stepped on" by stronger, closer New York stations which for some reason are all one channel off the Chicago ones (for instance, WINS 1010AM blows out my chance to clearly hear AM1000). But in Nova Scotia, much farther east and farther still from Chicago, 1000 comes in strong again, because those NYC stations are proportionately weaker.

Long and short of it... I have to pay for Gameday here, but in Nashville (or Halifax), I could hear the Sox for free :D: