XERB with Wolfman Jack XTRA "AM Stereo six nine O" I don't know if it was C-Quam or what. Those were two that I remember listening to as a kid at night when others were out getting high.

Which was the early 70's in my case.

Yes, I remember there was lots of interesting stuff to be heard on SW/MW/LW in the '70s. I'll bet it comes back to some extent if today's infrastructure becomes unreliable for information. Good to have the long reach capability just in case.

@@InsideOfMyOwnMind A bunch of us listened to da Wuffman in the mid and late 60s, a funny guy. As far as AM stereo, the distortion could be annoying, didn't care for it.

Absolutely Mate ⚡🙏⚡ I'm still Hooked as an Old Bugger haha.

That is awesome!

@@Barry-Watson I found them in the same store 2 years apart.

Replying to @bobc.7958: You moved your radio shack 200 miles from your house.

Art was definitely one of a kind.

Agree 100%. Unique

Mels Hole

Art's parts

I worked 2nd shift for many years and listened to Art Bell every night on my way home. Miss those days...

I'm listening on a full Klipsch system (RF-7s) and hear every mouth noise this guy makes and find it close to nauseating. EVERY sigh, deep congested, mucoused inhale, every thick swallow, lip smacking, you name it. He must like quality mics but is missing on EQing these noises out correctly during their use. Interesting subject matter, I'm a radio geek but tough to listen to..there is such a thing as Too Much detail.

Thanks. That mic is very sensitive to that sort of thing. I'll have to keep those issues in mind.

@@Barry-Watson I found the cub cadet episode the least grating and smoothest audio quality.... and it was probably a clip on mic!

Same Here mate, this is my 2nd Vid & I also Subscribed.

Heh, glad you think so! Thanks.

I agree. I still have pre war radio which was designed with special care for quality of transmission. It was real gem I struggled for many yeras to bring to it's perfect tuning/sounding and it proves now exactly as intended . I must say that even with today modulation 9kHz it makes me more joy than FM/CD played with stereo tube and unusually good speakers.This radio has four IF bands of selectivity - 7,9,11,and 14 kHz and usualy is switched to 14 kHz I suspect that in AM circuitry in IF are created any better phase correlations which make presentation more live and emotional than FM/CD . If AM program would be transmitted by station in my country (actualy I must listen to distant TR from like 1000miles only at night ) and (that is no possible now) with 14 kHz modulation it would beat FM with dynamic of sound .

Thank you!

c crane let A.M. fans down when he put a D.SP. chip in the analog A.M. radio and changed the way it tunes.(E P. Pro).

Nice. Would have loved to have heard European broadcasts back in those days. I've never had great luck with the SDR, because it mine would pick up too much noise from the computer that it was attached to. Apparently you've got that figured out. Thanks for the comment.

@@Barry-Watson Sorry to hear your SDR experience was not good. I mainly use an Airspy HF+ Discovery connected to a Wellbrook loop antenna but an official YouLoop antenna on the HF+ should behave well. Of course, some computers are quite a source of interference in their own right… I wonder if anyone is recording huge swathes of the AM/SW bands to preserve for future generations. Imagine having access to a virtual online radio that lets you tune to a date and time in the past.

Yep.....and Radio Caroline. Even more pirate than Luxembourg.

​@@graemedavidson499There is such a thing as an Internet radio site that lets you tune by years. It's been a long time since I was on it that I can't remember the details. Hopefully, it's still out there.

Thanks for sharing. Yeah, sometimes collections of equipment find interesting ground paths, and they interact in unexpected ways.

Much appreciated!

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!

Hey, thanks!

Excellent point. When I was a kid I would tune to am static, where there is no station, and put a meter on the radio to "measure" how far away the thunderstorms were by the lightning strike static.

Thanks for the info!

I recently got back into the hobby after a decades-long absence with an SDRPlay RSPDx. A lot as sure changed both for good and bad.

Thanks for sharing!

Wow. Thank you very much! Glad you enjoyed it.

Great suggestion! I know my productions could be a lot better as I improve my filmmaking skills. Thanks!

Best wishes!

Thanks for watching!

I just couldn't get anything east of the Appalachians or west of the Rockies living in the Midwest. 😟

Welcome!

@@Barry-Watson did you become a Ham as well?

Thanks! No, never got a Ham radio license. I found radio equipment and technology interesting. But learning Morse code, or talking with random people on the air, was not a big interest of mine.

Good tip! I have a old select-a-tenna AM antenna (It's about a foot diameter and a couple inches thick, tunable loop antenna that sits next to the radio). It really can make a difference for weak signals. Too bad they don't make those any more, but there are similar products in the market. I think I put a link to one in the video description.

@@Barry-Watson I’ve not seen those Barry, over here in the U.K. the Tecsun AN200 is a popular tuneable loop for AM. I did make a box loop with speaker wire and variable capacitor taken from an old radio but it is too bulky/ugly to leave lying around in different rooms. The MLA 30 loop is also inexpensive and works quite well, also tried a passive YouLoop with some good results, but neither of those are tuneable.

Communications World with Whites Radio Log were great back in the 70s.

Glad it was helpful!

Thanks!

Good deal!

Thanks for watching!

Thank you!

Nice! I've never had much luck picking up shortwave, I don't know if there just are not a lot of active stations anymore, or more likely my radio/antenna just isn't ideal. Thanks for watching!

@@Barry-Watson You need a seriously good antenna and a seriously good radio but there still are things to be heard. A lot of short wave stations are closing down. People need to have a reason to transmit and the reason would be the listeners. People need to have a reason to listen and the reason would be the transmitters. Thus we have that age old questions "Which went rotten first, the chicken or the egg"

Can't imagine the power bill for a 50-100+ kw transmitter, especially in a poorer country.​@@kensmith5694

Ha ha., I figure at current electric utility rates and assuming efficiency, it's probably somewhere around $20 to $30 per hour to power the transmitter. Of course that's just the transmitter and doesn't account for maintenance or anything. But, that's about the cost of a talented employee. Commercial stuff. I recall the utility bills at a manufacturing factory that I used to work at, they were pretty staggering.

For most of my am radio listening, it was mono. I've never owned an AM stereo receiver, am stereo was introduced around 1990. For a number of reasons, am stereo was never embraced by the listening public. Initially there were multiple encoding systems which I think caused marketplace confusion, and am stereo radios never really became popular. The really old (mono) radios from the 1930s to the 1950s usually had fairly wide bandwidth filters which allowed for pretty decent sound quality, but as the AM band became more populated radios with tighter filters that were necessary to pick out all of the stations next to each other became the norm, this limited the fidelity, limited the high frequency response. So, because of this, and because of the nature of AM being more prone to static, it just couldn't compete with the fidelity of FM Radio. I think the listening public didn't see a compelling advantage to am stereo, when FM stereo was so popular and better sounding. Listeners who cared about sound quality, would simply choose FM. Standard (mono) AM radio was perfectly viable for its content primarily of news, sports, and talk shows, and music for casual listening. So, it was a solution that was in search of a problem. I put stereo am radio into the category of cool inventions that the public never really embraced, like quadraphonic LP vinyl records, betamax videotapes, and such. I'm sure there are plenty of major market am stations broadcasting a stereo signal, but I doubt they have a lot of listeners who are intentionally choosing stereo radios. When shopping for radios, AM stereo is hardly even a selling point. Or, at least that's the way I see the market, sitting on this side of the pond over here in the US.

Thanks!

True. Good point.

WLS in Chicago, KAAY in Little Rock, WWL in New Orleans. Charlie Douglas and the Road Gang broadcasted directly to over the road truckers from about 11PM to 4 or 5AM nationwide on 50,000watt clear channel WWL. Starting in 1973, ran for 13 years on WWL till it was picked up by satellite.

I'm also in the UK and absolutely echo your thoughts on DAB and FM. I have a Magnum Dynalab FT-101 FM tuner with a 5-element beam pointed as Sutton Coldfield and it can sound truly wonderful. DAB is great in the car when it isn't dropping out for listening to LBC, but it is chronically crap to listen to. Even to the point of power consumption of the DAB RX modules - why this hasn't improved over the last several decades that DAB has been on-air I don't know. But the plethora of stations operating at 32kbps mono means a slide away from FM quality towards competing more with AM. But the BBC seemingly aren't bothered with quality delivery, just cutting costs of distribution as the transmitter infrastructure was flogged of to Arqiva decades ago.

I’m also in the U.K. and agree. Tried DAB, even put up an external antenna for it but just dislike the compressed, digital audio and find it unpleasant to listen to. Weaker signals go robotic or completely drop out too, Amplitude Modulation gently fades in and out but nearly always readable. During the daytime there is little choice, usually end up listening to GHR on FM, at work or at home. But at night time AM and Shortwave comes alive, Caroline on 648 is usually listenable with a loop antenna, Dutch pirates above 1610 or I look in and around the 49m band. Still plenty on unless we have a solar storm like recently. Takes more effort these days but having said that antennas are dirt cheap. A Tecsun AN200 or MLA 30 will serve most people well and neither cost much, around £30 each. 73

I could receive England on MW in Poland few years ago but almost all is gone. Now at night I can hear 50/50 Sport radio and some traces only R.Carolina.

I can relate. Sounds like an amazing time, good memories.

Thanks for the info!

Very nice!

Thanks! That's an Audio Technica condenser mic.

@@Barry-Watson Model AT2020?

Very good! Yeah, it's just a cheap condenser, but it's one of the better budget mics and I feel it works okay for video voiceovers. I think the AT 4000 series are actually rather nice mics, and that would be my recommendation for more serious recording without getting into very expensive mics.

Thanks for sharing! That was a classic 1960s radio!

@@Barry-Watson Sure thing. I also had the later generation of the Superradio. Thanks again.

Wow, I would not have expected that. But, I suppose digital processing is in just about everything these days.

Thanks for the info!

Ah yes, the inverse square law of intensity versus distance.

If you've got QRM, build thyself a tunable loop and relax.

I mentioned it, I think the key items are that it has an extra large AM antenna, much larger than most portable radios plus more filter stages than most radios so it's able to get the most out of weak signals.

I don't know. I've heard good things about the Yaesu FT-450. I think if you're willing to pay the price, there's some really impressive equipment these days. I also think if you're willing to string up a few hundred feet of long wire antenna you can probably hear the world with a low budget radio.