KNBR (AM 680) Antennas, Redwood City, CA, 2024
All the pixels, less risk of electrocution or falling, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54131419266
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this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2025
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Note, important safety tip: you can get closer to this tower without clearly trespassing or jumping fences than most other 50KW broadcast antennas I've encountered. I measured a field strength of over 80V/m a bit outside the tower fence, which is an incredibly strong signal (though still within OSHA limits at the frequency involved).
Resist any temptation to jump the fence and climb the (energized) tower. You'd be electrocuted as soon as you touch it.
AM broadcast is a technically interesting and somewhat endangered medium. The low frequencies mean that signals routinely travel well beyond their local coverage areas, especially overnight in winter. So there's a bit of mystery in tuning around the dial late at night; you never know what you might pick up.
Sadly, industry consolidation and the growth of higher bandwidth media (FM, satellite, podcasts) has greatly reduced the variety and local focus of programming. But it somehow hangs on.
The rapid decline of local content on the mediumwave bands has considerably reduced the romantic mystery of tuning around and seeing what you find. It's mostly now a sterile mix of mass-produced, syndicated right wing talk, sports, and so on. But there are still a handful of stubbornly local stations producing their own programming.
@[email protected] agreed, and many of those unique, local broadcasters are operating at relatively low power levels, while the QRM from poorly shielded switching electronics gets louder every day.
kind of feels like MW AM isn't the only communication medium suffering this kind of SNR degradation lately.