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  • Dave V. ND9JRND3JR@social.coop
    Jun 4, 2025, 5:59 AM

    I got a new radio delivered today: the Qodosen DX-286. It's a great little radio with excellent FM band characteristics and just the right amount of features to satisfy a techie like me.

    Unfortunately using it on the AM broadcast band (known elsewhere as mediumwave or MW) reminded me just how much of a wasteland most of that band is. Reactionary propaganda posing as news and talk shows on almost every station. This is what primed people for Fox News and then later Newsmax, OANN, and Breitbart.

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  • Dave V. ND9JRND3JR@social.coop
    Jun 4, 2025, 4:05 PM

    More on the radio. The DX-286's much-touted FM capabilities live up to what I've read online. In fact this radio & the GE Superradio III are the only 2 radios I have where I can't hear images of nearby station WLRW on 94.5 anywhere but on 94.5. And unlike the SRIII plugging in an external antenna is a) much easier (3.5mm jack instead of screw terminals) and b) makes a difference on both LW/MW/SW AM and FM.

    The other two features I like are full RDS on FM and the signal strength numbers.

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  • Dave V. ND9JRND3JR@social.coop
    Jun 4, 2025, 4:08 PM

    More on the RDS. This is the only radio I have that can display all the fields in RSS, not just Program Source (PS) and Radio Text (RT). This is not only a really nice feature as a listener; it will also help a lot when I set up RDS at WEFT in earnest.

    This also means you can use a RDS Data field from an FM station to keep the radio's clock in sync. I've not had much luck with that, though. The station to do that with here in Champaign is WILL-FM on 90.9.

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  • Deborah Pickettfutzle@old.mermaid.town
    Jun 4, 2025, 6:03 AM

    @ND3JR It's interesting to contrast that with the AM band here. Yes, we have the talkback and shock jock stations too, but our national broadcaster always has a local station on AM, and it's that station where emergency alerts are always announced. Everyone in risk areas is encouraged to have a battery-operated AM radio that works even if the power is out.

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  • Dave V. ND9JRND3JR@social.coop
    Jun 4, 2025, 6:10 AM

    @futzle Fascinating! I know in Australia AM stereo was much bigger than it was in the US, too. Sadly we didn't even have "public" broadcasting until the 1970s and we still don't have anything that can be considered a national broadcaster, our "public" broadcasters having started to sell themselves out in the 1980s.

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  • Deborah Pickettfutzle@old.mermaid.town
    Jun 4, 2025, 6:14 AM

    @ND3JR (Insert my "fifty states in a trenchcoat" jibe here.)

    I can't even recall if AM stereo succeeded here. There was a lot of talk about it in the late 80s but it was a time when a lot of the AM music stations were moving to FM anyway, so I don't think anyone left on AM cared in the end. I don't know if I could easily buy an AM stereo receiver now.

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  • Dave V. ND9JRND3JR@social.coop
    Jun 4, 2025, 6:21 AM

    @futzle
    I know here you can't because the digital AM method uses the same QAM that C-QUAM did, so stations have to pick one or the other and I'm pretty sure most have chosen digital (iBiquity IBOC, definitely an example of a corporation bribing the FCC commissioners to get their proprietary system certified as the standard).

    AM's on the brink of collapse here anyway; most young people here don't even know it exists, or see it as something for their crazy old relatives.

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