In my country in Eastern Europe, all radio stations are located on ultra shortwave FM 88-108 MHz. And almost all radio receivers(which are available in electronic stores) have only FM wave or(if you lucky) FM and AM(MW) waves. Now, recently I managed to find a small "Panasonic" portable radio with 4 wavebands! FM & AM(MW) & LW & SW. What a great day it was! Even if today, 2023, 3 waves are almost empty, it's still good to have a super radio!!!
CIS is not the same way. My grandmother in Kyrgyzstan had a multiband radio. she used to pick up radio enthusiasts: she used to referred to them as "aferists" (commercial criminals). I still do not understand why she hated them, even though they did not bother her. Now I have a multiband radio, and I have hard time catching those hooligans. Please come back!
I'm 52 years old and most of people of my age here in Finland don't even know any other forms of radio broadcast but FM. We don't have any AM stations any more but the Scandinavian Weekend Radio run by the radio enthusiasts.
@@ildart8738 I can hear them often on 3-3,4MHz AM. I use 55m and 62m long dipole type antennas. I guess all of those stations are not "hooligans" or pirates but also some reindeer keepers from Siberia etc.
I am glad I had a father who loved medium-wave radio. I remember growing up and listening to old radio shows such as the Lone Ranger and the Sergent Preston of the Yukon, It made me use my imagination and for that reason, I will always love it.
WJDX, AM 620, Jackson, Mississippi was the station I grew up listening to as a child in the seventies. Wonderful video! Cheers from the sunny South of the USA, mate!
Interesting and nostalgic. Started listening to MW over 50 years ago in Bournemouth, UK, using dads portable radio. That eventually led to becoming a merchant navy radio officer. After that, I came back to the Valencia region of Spain where I am now and got involved in Christian radio production. In parallel with that I am a voice actor. Terribly miss the number of MW and indeed SW stations that are no longer there. Now it's back to square one, again listening to LW and MW on a Sony portable!
Since the late 50's I'm listening to AM radio. My favorites were Luxemburg 208 "The big noise in Europe" and later all AFN stations across Germany, bringing the best of music. With some long wire strapped out in the garden I received in the 70's Radio Caroline, Laser 558, Radio London and Radio Veronica, depending on the weather. A few years ago Big L on 1395 (from Holland) and Arrow Classic Rock on 675 were my daily bread. Today I can pull in 648 Radio Caroline and also Lyca Radio and in the evening Transworld Radio from Poland, still broadcasting on AM, using my 1957 Philetta valve radio. I'm presenting lots of AM recordings from AFN Bremerhaven on my Soundcloud, proving how great mediumwave can sound if done right. Needless to say I'm running a small mediumwave valve transmitter with a tiny Blane/Knox Tower in my studio myself, to feed my collection of old transistors and valve receivers whenever I feel sentimental. Cheers!!!
I'm glad you mentioned Radio Caroline because that's one outfit looking to increase their coverage on medium wave. They're always looking for donations so if you want to help keep medium wave alive, send them a few bob !!
haha...! I can' hear anything on mw or lw when my Christmas lights are on... :-) Thanks for your video, is much appreciated! I just started listening in Normandy, I'm getting a LOT of Spanish stations, good thing I speak spanish too... Hasta pronto!
The RU-vid algorithm seems to be working exceptionally well for me when recommending videos lately. I am not subscribed (yet), didn't search for this or anything radio-related. It just popped up in my recommendations. Finding gems like your channel feels so rewarding. I'm not too versed in the topic at hand, but I certainly enjoy an enthusiast talking about his passion. And you can be sure that I will watch your other stuff right after finishing this comment. Great video!
I have fond memories of Radio Caroline...Radio Luxembourg and of course BBC Radio One back in the early to mid 70s. Today I live in New York and there is plenty of radio....both AM and FM. From my apartment building AM reception is very noisy.....but out in my boat my little Tecsun 330 will pull in AM stations from one end of the 'dial' to the other. Radio still has its fair share of attractors.....but you are right....its days may be numbered. Cheers.
I miss WYNS (later WBYN) 1160 in Lehighton, PA USA. I've heard some old vinyl records were and still can be found on the hillside next to where the transmitter and towers were. It shut down a while back and the towers and tuning huts were destroyed not too long ago. Sad.
Here in Australia MW is still going strong with news/talk. The highest rating stations in the two largest cities are AM! There’s a weird “custom” here in Australia that FM music stations must skew younger. The so-called classic hits station in Melbourne (Gold 104) plays artists such as the Black Eyed Peas, and has dropped all 70s music from their playlist. Their former AM sister station 4KQ 693 was amazing, playing deep cuts from the 60s-80s with announcers who were clearly knowledgeable about the music. They rated around 10% and had a core of loyal followers. Of course it’s now a sports station sadly…and it rates less than 1%.
Just landed on your channel. Very entertaining - more please! Best medium wave station ? No contest ! BIG L Radio London 266m 1964-1967 . Still missed after all these years - witness all the tributes online. Still remember the desperately sad 14th August 1967 enforced closedown.
I really appreciate your effort to keep radio enthusiasm alive, Peter. I'm 51 years old, so I couldn't catch up with those old days. However, there were a few radio stations on MW when I was a kid. I really enjoyed listening to the stations which not many people knew about. I have XHDATA D-808, too. I still like trying to find foreign radio stations on MW and SW. Unfortunately, it became very difficult to find a radio station on these bands. There are some broadcasts from Romania on MW. That's all you can hear from where I live (Turkey). I feel nostalgic for my childhood. Everything was different, and we were happier. I think I'm getting older :) What about you?
thanks for that insight Olcay Havalan. Yes we are all getting older and radio is ever changing - its good to share the memories and look to what might be in the future
Hello everibody, my name is Michael, i live in Roumania, i`m 55 years old it is very sad that stations in MW are closed, it is true you need thery strong power emisions, but schematic of MW receiver is thery simple and medium waves propagate hundreds, thousand miles. When i was 13 y i built a simple 0v1 radio and i recieved radio Turkie. On that time, `81-82, they emited pop music "capitalist" one, and i was thery happy to listen. Old times! Maybe we shoud make a group of nostalgic and sent a request to UE to put back again MW stations.
The XHData D 808 has a larger than average MW loop antenna and works fine for MW a little bit better than most, at least for a portable. If your MW becomes empty maybe you could turn it into a hobby band. Outside of that it’s still big business in North America. Actually there’s still some music stations on MW and it seems like some stations are changing back to music as formats are desperately being tried and replaced. There are “niche” markets for MW here. I hear classic rock on 1220 here.
I remember listening to radio luxemberg on my crystal set with a one transistor amplifier and my Mother trying to remove my headphones ex WD.without waking me. O boy those headphones really did squash my ears. Dan Dare, Dick Barten, Paul Temple, and whatever happened to Horace Batchelor from Keynsham, Bristol. Those were the GOOD old days.
My stepdad listens to Reds games on Cincinnati's 700 WLW and honestly there's nothing like it... Out on the patio with a beer or two and baseball on a crappy little AM radio 🥰
I saw WLW 700 on RU-vid And the owners of that radio station was talking about how powerful this radio station was backed then I think around 500 KW and they were showing these large transmitter looking cabinets ,modulators and antenna cables,. That was back then and now I can hear this station at night between 9 PM till 6 AM at 50kW and I live in the southern part of Georgia😃
@@sherrokinchen5253 I've started getting into shortwave radio listening, and had to buy an AM filter because 700 WLW and Dayton's 1290 WHIO cause echoes across the spectrum.
Awesome video, this is instantly one of my favorites. Thanks for sharing. As an American currently working in Poland I get up every morning and tune to 1215 to hear Absolute before the sun comes up. It’s great to hear my mother tongue over the broadcast airwaves. Love your channel and content mate! In the USA my favorite MW station was WNBC (NYC) on 660 kHz which became a Sport station WFAN. As WNBC is was one of the best Top 40 pop stations ever.
I was amazed the other evening. While listening to MW on my 1960 Dansette 111 portable, l managed to receive Manx radio on the Isle of man. Considering that I live in Southampton I think that's pretty good. I have subscribed to your channel.
After two hurricanes hit my area in Louisiana in 2020 the ONLY way to get news, info, and updates on power line repairs, open roads, damage to other areas, Red Cross AID, and other needed information was with my Sony ICF-19, a very sensitive receiver with a very thick 4.75 inch internal ferrite antenna. I could listen to all the distant MW stations during the day in other places that weren`t damaged. It isn`t as sensitive as the CCrane EP PRO I have now but it`s way above the average. I can listen to Dallas, Tx during the day outdoors with the CCrane and it`s at least 300 miles away. I imagine the Sony can get a listenable signal too with headphones. The Sony is amazing because it can run over 400 hours on batteries. Even though I was using rechargeable batteries and never turned the radio off for two weeks they never ran dead. Now I have a lot of various solar panels, some with charging ports, power stations, and a large 300ah LiFeP04 battery with a plug in and solar charging to make life easier the next time it happens. I immediately started getting this stuff when they gave us covid stimulus money.
@@LONGINTHETOOTHtv Probably open up the floodgates for low-powered local pirate stations aimed at small towns - if they could come up with a way to get stereo on medium wave and make it sound like FM and eliminate all that noise!
I grew up in the late 1950's and 1960's listening to WBZ 1030 and WMEX 1510 AM, both top 40 stations at the time. I started DXing many years ago. I was in a suburban area about ten miles west of Boston, MA. Great hobby but it takes a lot of patience and record keeping. Medium Wave (or AM) is doing quite well here in the states, as it is essential to public safety. Many areas cannot receive FM or cellular well (out west), so AM is the best for emergency public information. Great video!
I loved listening to Radio Luxembourg on 208 metres when I was a teenager in the 1980s. I also loved Radio 1 on 275 and 285. Now I live in New Jersey just outside of New York City and Philadelphia. WABC 770 from NYC is great on the weekends with some music shows. I moved from Scotland to the U.S. in 1987. From that time to the mid 1990s many stations broadcasted in C-Quam AM stereo. It was wonderful!
I’m in Middlesbrough North East England. Favourite station on medium wave when I was a kid and actually m favourite station full stop was Radio Luxembourg. I do miss all the Great 208
I love listening to Gold Radio AM when out in the car....at home I listen do it on a digital service maybe its called DAB.....I am in the North West Of England. Far as I can remember in my area its on 1548khz or is it 1458 always confuse the two but its in the cars radio memory....far as I know the Transmitter is near Stockport UK. I love listening to the music Gold play....50s 60s 70s hits....sounds great on AM. Hope they dont close the AM transmitter.....as my car radio is not digital......not going to bother buying one for the car. I am an amateur Radio Operator by the way I get a feeling you are.....Nick 2E0LPL.
Goulburn here in NSW Australia is the 1st town to have no AM radio stations. Both the commercial station, 2GN & the local RN outlet both converted to FM. In southern NSW there are only 2 AMs stations left- 2BA Bega & 2CP Cooma - both ABC local radio outlets.
Many years ago in Eccles Manchester UK my grandfather and his mate across the back garden rigged up a copper wire antenna between their chimneys and at night on winter evenings we listened to WKBW Buffalo NY loud and clear. (1520 on your dial!)
1240 am WROV was the Top 40 station of my youth. They switched to ESPN Sports talk and then to political talk which is very big in the USA 🇺🇸. However, I can hear the music of my youth on 1410 am!
What a great video I loved it! Do you think with UK stations closing the opportunity will arise for us to pick up USA stations here in the UK? When it’s nighttime in both places?
Hi Peter, Im from Belgium. I literal wrote in the search field on youtube "what stations broadcast on the AM band" I have an old end 80's early 90's stereo in seperated components. A lot of wires on the backside, also a tuner unit that I turned on in the evening while I 'm working on my computer. Listening to local FM broadcast. I asked that question because the tuner has a AM button, full of noise and no music. I was wondering what AM was. So thanks to help me out.
Hi from Italy. Where I live it's a highly urbanised area and noise is everywhere. Yet with some "luck" and a rotatable ferrite antenna I can still pick up something, yet I'm still in the process of learning where to look ...and when! My wife says her tabletop flowers are better than the radio and she hides it behind them.. I beg to differ! 😆
As a child in the Midlands Beacon 303. Today, living on the north coast of Anglesey, my Kenwood r5000 is set at 1368 - Manx Radio, it plays away whilst the 11 metre band on the Yaesu ft-920 is dead!! 😊
Oh yes sOftcom need to shut down those flipping talkbore frequencies for a start. 1053 is a 62db signal with me here in Brighton along with Absolute drivel on 1197. 693 should have gone years ago also...Peter you know with a wellbrook loop well away from the house you'll have far better reception and no doubt hear USA for example WBBR on 1130 or VOCM on 590. I've heard many stations over the years with my loops. The X band can be very interesting also with all those Dutch and Greek pirate above 1602...Also sOftcom should allow phase modulation so Caroline can use Cquam for AM Stereo. This was big in Australia as well as USA. It can sound like FM with a wide bandwidth...
The problem with medium wave is government, at least in the US. Once they decided that spectrum could be auctioned and money can be made, AM (medium wave) was vulnerable. DAB and anything else is only as good as something that can line a politician’s pocket with a dollar. Some corporate startup want medium wave for local internet? The only question is how much they will pour into the coffers. If not for so many special interests crying about the importance of AM broadcast for emergency comms, interference concerns from aviation, and the military for who knows what, the FCC would have sold it off already. BTW, a lot of noise on AM seems to be cheap switching power supplies and light dimmers. When power supplies were 100-250kHz, you only heard some higher-order harmonics, but now with higher switching frequencies and PFCs the fundamental or first harmonic is in-band. Light dimmers with triacs have always been little noise makers, but some of the latest wifi-connected units from off Amazon make noise you can almost pick up on your back molars. I was surprised to see how much the S meter dropped on my little battery powered radio when I shut off the mains to the house. It wasn’t the computer, or the router, or the access points, but the smart light switches, the printer, the appliances even if turned off, the alarm system, etc. It is all adding up, with each contributing a little more to the noise floor, until the sum of the noise is deafening to medium wave and below.
Here in India, there as much as hundreds of radio stations transmitting on the MW. There are many listeners of MW Radios. As the FM and FM Stereo stations cover a range of around 100 Km, the MW easily receivable to distance of around 400 Km (1 Megawatt transmitter transmits from Calcutta). However, it's the Prasar Bharti's All India Radio, the govt. owned Radio Broadcaster that broadcasts on both MW, FM as well as on SW. The private radio stations are all transmitting on the FM Band and mostly FM Stereo.
Thank you for this video very interesting. Yes noise is an issue but have found out one way to null it out. I have a Philips D2935 and to fix most of the problem with the noise on AC Mains is to use the wire from the Mains and and line it around near the built in Ferrite rod ant and position it where it nulls. Regarding my Favourite stations on MW that no longer exist and it is Dx i am refering to back in the 1990's Radio 10 Gold 675 & Luxumbourg RTL Radio on 1440 kHz.
I don't know a lot about dxing but I like to listen to medium wave stations on my tecsun s8800. It seems that most nights are different with what I can pick up. Many different languages, many different European stations and north African. It's a bit of a buzz to find a station then I'll go on line to find out who and where it's from. I even joined the medium wave circle to gain more knowledge.. Might have a listen in a bit to see who's out there... Hopefully it won't completely die out.. I'm yet to pick up America on medium wave.. Can't beat a bit of dxing.
Some USA MW stations go to a music format in the wee hours of the morning if they are not tied into the syndicated night time talk broadcasts. Best time for MW music is typically 3 am to 5 am local. From the Washington DC suburbs, some of my favorites are WRCR 1700 AM (US extended band) Long Island NY, WSVS 800 AM Crewe VA, WSM 650 AM (Original country music played very early morning vs the new stuff) Nashville TN and of course CFZM 740 AM (Zoomer) Toronto Ontario Canada. I use a GE SR 3 , that I bought new in 1999. Stock ferrite, no external antenna.
MW still sounds very good with wide bandwidth receivers. The Tecsun H-501x offers great wide bandwidth MW sound. I highly recommend this receiver but get yours soon before China is blocked from selling these products in North America and possibly Europe.
I collect vintage radios mostly AM and with the closure in may 2024 of BBC Radio 4 i will have very little to listen to. I have bought my self a small AM transmitter with a range of a couple of meters to i can broadcast privately to them but it nit quite the same. We do not have a reliable emergency broadcast system( or much else for that matter) in Britain so surly the AM transmitters would be worth keeping for this reason alone?
Yes, most MW in the US is talk, mostly Political 😢, some news and sports, very little music, like you mentioned years ago was were Rock found its home. I must say now, here in the US, the noise level is worse than years ago, as you said. I notice too that Canada has ended many MW stations too, going to fm.
Here in the USA, medium wave transmitters are all solid state. No more big 50 kw tube transmitters. They are very efficient. The majority of our medium wave stations also transmit digital AM.
He forgets about the great Canadian stations on medium wave. Possibly he is not aware of the BIG 8 CKLW? Some say this was the greatest of them all, in North America with its massive signal and its coverage of many US States & Canadian Provinces.
Actually here in the US I haven't had a huge problem on medium wave with noise, at least at night. The bigger problem is that there are too many stations fighting for the same airspace so you often times get two or three stations on the same frequency drowning each other out and making listening difficult. Also another tidbit of information is that over here medium wave is simply known as the AM band by most people that actually pay attention. Though I'm noticing more and more people don't even know what the different band are, all they know is that they press a button and get one set of stations and then press it again and get another. I'm not knocking the "modern generation" or anything like that, I've noticed that with people of all ages, so don't even think of bringing up that garbage in a reply.
What prompted the US authorities to maintain the medium wave service was it's national coverage . It would allow the government to warn it's citizens of any impending disasters. With the demise of MW the entire citizens info network would be pretty useless. With modern tech and DAB radio , MW and FM are pretty much obsolete. Ford motors removed MW from their car radios while Tesla don't have radios at all. However after intervention by the US authorities Ford agreed to relent and are still fitting the MW band in their vehicles.There are very good reasons for retaining MW for sound only but those reasons are very technical but that's another story.
The noise is also in reinforced concrete buildings through the rebar. If I go past a transformer box outside, it is there. Look at this gentleman who got it removed from his house. tEz6xTZRWlM I don't see a point in low power, which wouldn't reach across borders. This is the most interesting aspect of listening, because we can hear distant local news, alternate perspectives or fresh advertisments. There are still stations in Europe at night. I remember pop music on Atlantic 252. Some other station in Africa wouldn't let me listen on some nights. English radio had poor reception. I think they put multiple transmitters on the same frequency because they echoed and cancelled each other out. There was a music station I forgot the name of, and Five Live. France Blue also had a similar problem. I've heard unlicensed radio operators near the top end of the band around 1500 kHz.
In the 1970ies many radio had the 49 meter bandspread, and perhaps 7-16 mhz general. I wonder if this was by some government decree? I think if one had to pick a European band it would be 22 meters 0:06
Loved the Pirate Radio stations. in the 1970s..Caroline, Mi Amigo etc however, Radio Luxembourg was one of my favourites, but the constant fading in and out was annoying ....very interesting info though, thanks
I just love MW. Veronica, Caroline,Mi Amigo, Luxemburg. Now my all time favorite is 648 Radio Caroline. Where I'm, Antwerp a lot Spanish and North African stations start to come in more and more. And yes, the noise is a big problem.
Radio 2 had a long wave frequency. '🎵Fifteen hundred on the long wave, this id Radio 2 on the BBC - B.B.C! 🎵' used to be one of their jingles. I get what you mean about some stations hogging the airwaves. I used to love listening to the World Service back in the 70s but nowadays its band has been hijacked by one of the rubbish 'local' stations which already has a bandwidth elsewhere.
I sure hope the USA doesn't go to DAB and Medium Wave continues for a very long time. It's still fun to pick up stations that are hundreds of miles from my location.
You ask A ham, which I think you are as well. You will probably find that they see DAB is dead and buried, mostly because they chose to put too many stations on the multiplex instead of using quality stations and giving them more bandwidth.
Not gonna lie, the only things i tend to personally listen to on mw is 5 live and radio 4 on lw. (However talksport and greatest hits are also broadcast on mw where i am. At least for now). So for me as long as the bbc ones stay as theh are id be content. If they go though, ill be pretty annoyed. Part of mw/lw's charm for me is the crackle
Thanks for the personal inspiration to myself with the medium wave talk. I could go on for YEARS about MW dxing. AM stereo as well. As for manufacturers and product design, please consult with a knowledgeable amateur radio operator on how to filter garbage noise created unchecked. Medium wave is also controversial in the fact that it continues to prove that God does have a sense of humor. Radio propagation is a coincidence byproduct of God's by circumstance repeater system called the ionosphere. Funny how that works. Our life cycles don't generate QRN or QRM. Yet we are bio electronic devices. Lacking quality control department is where we started slacking in the research and development stages. I mean come on people. Especially to someone designing electronics that aren't even made to have anything to do with radio like lights, heaters, air conditioning, refrigerator, washer and dryer. These products should NOT be legalized spark gap transmitters! A few strategically placed capacitors should be able to stop the RF output. It would be a shame to let this band be wiped out due to someone else lining their pockets with cash as a reward for cutting cost at any price in the name of greed. And to think, I purely STUMBLED upon your channel. Having been to Germany twice, I'm aware of the difference of the radio systems here and there. 9Khz, 10Khz been there done that. Long wave as well. So I can sympathize with all of us who knew of the stations that were there. People who have never left CONUS will NEVER understand about the LW thing either. But speaking of MW in Europe, did you ever check 1017Khz? 600 KW with rtty on a phase modulation that couldn't be detected by any monophonic am radio. But my Sony AM stereo could. My question is this; what were they sending in rtty, and who were they sending that to with so much power. I'm sure you have heard the station. Kinda hard not to. You have enough radios for the task. Please let me know if you are or were aware of that. And if not, I'm glad to be of service to bring up this minute piece of history to you all. The next best chance to have heard the rtty is maybe the Sansui brand all systems am stereo FM stereo receiver. And even then it was hot or miss as that radio is looking for pilot tones to open up. So that wasn't a stable method of pulling phase detected signals. The Sony doesn't need a pilot to decode ANYTHING. LIKE I said, could go on for YEARS on the topic. Thanks again for the morning and that gets my subscription to your channel.
Terrestrial radio as we know it is in its last stages. That's the reality. Except China is manufacturing MW, SW radios in thousands if not millions- that's something serious we need to think about. Why should they do it. Unlike other collectables, MW, SW radios become useless as the stations shut down their transmitters.
I think China know there is still demand for these sets. Other countries especially in Europe are too busy pushing digital and telling us terrestrial is dead. Thanks for the input சங்கரர்
Thought it was funny, they took all the SW stations off the air..... and since the war in Russia, they put them back on. AM here in the US, mostly "Talk Radio."
You did not mention MW DXing at night. As a kid i had a tiny MW crystal radio that used my window screen as an antenna. I was in indiana, picked up Wolfman Jack in Tijuana, 100,000 watts, almost 2,000 miles away. Today i can pick up much weaker stations 1,000 miles away, using a directional antenna. Sadly, much of the talk now is just right-wing lunatics claiming president Kennedy is alive, blasting hillbillies with a mind control ray. Late night MW Has become the providence of the loonies.
