Is there any broadcasting on the Longwave band/AM radio in North America? And is there a handful or many stations broadcasting
Additional question. are there still Longwave car radio's on sale? Not AM/FM?

"As of August 2007, the FCC had licensed 4779 AM stations and 9159 FM stations (6279 commercial and 2880 educational)."

I used to listen to WBT (1110 on the AM dial) in Charlotte, NC; since moving, I listen to WSJS (600 on the AM dial) in Winston-Salem, NC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L..._and_Central_America

Sagus listens to 1380 in this region (East Central PA) but it loses transmission here at about 5pm when it is overpowered by AM stations. Not sure where it is based from.

The only longwave in the US that I know of are navigational beacons which simply repeat a Morse code ID over and over and some low-power experimental amateur radio stations. Supposedly in the right conditions European longwave can be heard on the US's Eastern seaboard, but when I was in Florida I certainly never heard them (despite a lot of trying). And, here you will not generally find the longwave band on any car radios, and even some of the general coverage shortwave receivres do not dip far into that band.

The Longwave Band in Europe at the Medium Wave end Had these beacons too Plus Loran Too which is a long Droning sound of different Frequencies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LORAN
Though these are being switched off as is the VLF signals used by the Navy (for Jamming!)
Is a now a bit of a desert Can hear French German stations after Dark and BBC Radio 4 during the Day World Service of a night
With Online ,digital services coming on stream
everybody is moving to an Online/Higher quality signal position Military and Navigation Have gone to High VHF/UHF frequencies
and LW is Pottering along with stations I suspect who are just Using up their contracted Period or until the Bosses pull the Plug
can't be long now?

LW is only used for internal service by one national station in Britain, Radio 4, a hangover from its time as the old "Home Service" of the BBC.

People here are now tending to use satellite or the Digital Audio Band to get radio, or use the internet.The great benefit of the internet is the number of foreign stations that are obtainable.Not everyone wants Monaco's local radio in Britain, but it's there if they do

It looks like there's some confusion over terminology. As dogspit says, US radios are not designed to pick up longwave.

US AM stations are medium wave (520-1610 kHz). The stations mentioned are at 1110, 600, and 1380 kHz, which are within that range.

quote:

Originally posted by methos:


US AM stations are medium wave (520-1610 kHz). The stations mentioned are at 1110, 600, and 1380 kHz, which are within that range.

Are your kHz the same as our kHz or is there also a KHz ? Wikipedia , in their article "Long Wave" is 148.5kHz to 283.5kHz [sic].They say BBC Radio 4's Long Wave is at 198kHz.But they say, in their article "Medium Wave", that Medium Wave is 515kHz to 1629kHz and BBC Radio 5's "Medium Wave" is at 909kHz [sic]

Long Wave

Medium Wave

I'm only used to 'metres' Here we older people don't colloquially talk of kilohertz. We'd say "Radio 4 Long Wave is 1500 metres" not "198 kilohertz" (or whatever it is). 'Medium Wave' is from about 220 metres to about 550 metres, with most broadcasts being in the 240 to 350 metre area e.g Radio 4 MW is, or was, 330 metres,and BBC Radio 1 was on 247 metres (= 1214 khz says Wikipedia on "Medium Wave" )

Thinking in those 'metre' terms it's plain why we call 1500m 'long' and 330m 'medium'

quote:

'Medium Wave' is from about 220 metres to about 550 metres, with most broadcasts being in the 240 to 350 metre area

Well, I'm long gone from the UK Fred, but I do remember listening to Capital Radio on 194 metres and to Radio Luxembourg on (fabulous)208.
Since then though, its been hertz for me.
I'd say it's a hangover thing from the old measurements we used to use in the UK. It happenened in France as well when "old" francs were replaced by "new"francs, and for years the radio and other media kept going on about the equivalent value of a hundred "new" francs being ten thousand "old" francs". Quite ridiculous: you either change or you don't, and I'm very pleased to see that the French didn't persist for more than a few months with translating euros into francs. Once people were used to it, the euro ruled supreme.

I recall too a discussion about temperature here a few weeks ago when it was said that fahrenheit is still used for trhe day's maximum temperatures and centigrade for the day's lows. Sounds kinda ridiculous to me to mix the two (though that's just my view). Happily, lstening closely to the UK weather forecasts of late would suggetst that such a habit of onverting °C into °F has now disappeared. This morning it was all talk of lows of "five to six" and highs of "ten to eleven". Which is good. Halfway houses are a pretty bad idea, for you can't run a racehorse in two races at once, can you?

Yes Colin the highs in Fahrenheit and the lows in Celsius was remarked upon by a comedian.The explanation of it is easy.It's true of older people, who readily understood that 0 Celsius was freezing but couldn't 'feel', 80F (or any other temperature) in Celsius. They knew what 80F felt like, from having lived with Fahrenheit since childhood.They are not really opting for both systems; they can 'feel' only one figure, zero,or freezing, in one of them (and it sounds colder than 32 !)

I 'understand' metres in 'MW' or 'LW' only in that I can visualise the wave. 1500m must, I've always thought since boyhood, have one and a half kilometres (or 7 1/2 furlongs, for Newmarket people) between peaks. That was always a pleasing image, imagining one peak at this village church and the next on the nearest village's church Can't do that with hertz !