A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act” now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.
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Not only that, it can be powered by the radio signal itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio
It should be noted though that you’ll need a fairly nearby radio station that is transmitting with a whackton of power.
This is just making me think that there should be a fundamentals of modern technology class in high school somewhere between a shop and physics class. It’d be a nerd elective but by fuck am I that nerd
Something between shop class and engineering. Like Technician class. I like it.
Yeah as an engineer I think it would’ve been far more useful than the engineering class I took that was basically how to do autocad and measure things. And it would’ve been useful for everyone.
There are two things at play here. 1) one of the primary purposes of the United States’s education policy is to produce engineers. This is an economic and military strategy. And 2) we live in a world where technology abounds and yet so few people understand it. A robot isn’t a magic person made of metal, it’s the manifestation of the laws of physics as applied for our own desires.
Making a radio receiver and a telegraph and a record and telephone and a basic battery etc makes for more grounded adults. Show the teenagers the way the real world works, clever applications of natural phenomena
I suppose if we discovered magic and understood its principles, it wouldn’t really be magic any more.
— Arthur C. Clarke
Well now you’re just where I fell when I learned about the imaginary plane in electronics.
I dunno, maybe we need something more General.
Aren’t you being a little Extra?
He’s just advanced, but you’ll never reach that state these days in afraid.
In today’s world, it’s basically impossible to even start out as a Novice.
You had shop?
lol no I’m a millennial
Shop was the rednecks making explosives in their garages, I was one of them. Mind you they werent supposed to explode.
Considering the growing importance of digital radio communication, Computer-Assisted Design, electronic repair, etc. I’d love to see this kind of thing.
100% accurate, thanks for the clear write up. Please stick it up on Wikipedia if you can :)
And I’ll add a bit about Clear Channel AM (unrelated to the billboard advertising company) - there were originally a handful of said stations that broadcast on a few AM band frequencies that are reserved just for them, so their broadcast range is impressive.
One for example is WOR radio in Chicago.
Fun factoid - you can see on very old AM radios those clear channel frequencies marked by a diamond or similar symbol on the dial.
Holy crap, I have an old radio (a few feet from me) for a decade and I had no idea what the diamond symbols on it were for. Thank you!
See this right here is what I’m on here for, these kinds of connections.
Man you seem like you’d be awesome to have a drink with and just learn… everything.
Good info here.
Reminds me of that kitchen sink that started picking up AM radio.
Very nice write up. I am curious, is the long wavelength Responsible for the rise and fall in audio quality depending on where you are. I have had this happen as I was driving, the sound quality seemed to pulse.
Also I used to live right at the base of a tall mountain range there was a AM transmitter on the other side less than 100 miles away. During the daytime I could never receive it, at night it would bounce over the mountain and it was pretty clear.
I doubt the wavelength is a factor there; depending on the circumstances it could be anything from atmospheric waves to something in your car causing intermittent interference.
The Earth’s ionosphere exists in several layers. During the day, solar radiation ionizes gas deeper into the ionosphere causing a layer that doesn’t usefully refract most radio waves; you can reach beyond the horizon on some of the higher HF bands, but down in the MF, you’ve basically got ground wave. At night, without the sun around to cook the atmosphere, that lower level dissipates, revealing a higher ever-present layer, and the geometry is right to refract signals for hundreds or even thousands of miles.
Skywave propagation can be really fun to play with.
That truck was a old fucker. It had AM and a 8 track. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the radio shielding was limited and degraded…
There likely was no “shielding” in a truck of that era, just simply the truck was made of metal as was the chassis of the radio, bolt 'em together and you’ve got a reasonable ground.
But, I do know from experience that there are items on a pickup truck that can produce radio interference especially when worn. A worn distributor is a spark gap transmitter, as I learned when I installed a mobile radio in my S10. The audio on my radio got a lot better after a good service of the ignition system.