BuickDeere et al AM radio and shop lights

I've got another set of questions about bad AM radio reception in fringe areas, made worse with flourescent shop lights and ionospheric-bounce. Yes, I know it was somewhat discussed earlier.

Real questions; not rhetorical. I can only get one AM station, and it works pretty well during the day or after midnight. At night, once the ionospheric bounce starts, my signal drifts to parts of Québec,Canada - or Chicago, instead of Albany, NY that is only 50 miles away.

I'd like to find away to eliminate the bounce/drift and stay locked on to the New York channel. Either that, or I have to practice my 17th century French like the Québecois use.

Other problem is the shop lights. When the signal is weak, and only one bank of my shop lights are turned on, the humm and static is so bad I can't hear anything. But . . . if I turn on ALL the lights in the shop, it clears right up with no hum at all. I've got the shop lights on one 20 amp circuit with a switch box containing three switches. Each switch controls a bank of six flourescent two-40-watt-tube light assemlbies.
That's got me a little stumped. One bank - extreme hum. Turn on a second bank, it goes half-way away, and if I turn on all the lights - signal gets absolutely clear.

I did try buying several radios supposedly made for fringe AM areas, including the GE Super Radio II and III. Works no better than any other cheap Chinese junk. My old tube-powered Hallicrafters S-200 works much better.

Obviously a conspiracy to make use use MORE electric. LOL !!

It is possible that the station you are trying to tune in is required to turn down their power during the evening time based on their FCC license.

As for the light problem, it may be that one set of lights is producing the opposite wave interference of a another set, thus canceling each other out. Another explanation could depend on where the radio is relative to the circuit breaker and wiring. By turning more light on you are drawing more current and changing the electromagnetic output of the circuit. Perhaps trying to move the radio around the shop with one banks of light on to get away from the source.

Sounds like a bad ballast or maybe a bad connection. All lites are white to white and black to black with ground. Does rotating the radio help at all. Moving radio to another plug.maybe adding another ferrite coil antenae and placing it in a different position away from the radio. One time long ago in the 60s customer wanted to listen to WSM Nashville she lived in IA City,Ia i added another ferite ant rotated 90 deg from the original in her new RCA combo and it worked. Man made electrical stuff sure can goof up signals.

That's an odd one with the fluorescent lamp interference reducing as more are energized?????????????
All I can guess is some sort of resonate harmonics that cancel each other. As previously stated there could well be a fixture that looks and operates fine. However it's a noise maker.
Your radio's have lots of sensitivity and at least good selectivity. I've seen some fancy ham rigs were if memory serves. The intermediate tuner stage can be tuned as well to null an offending station.....$$$
A ham style rig with side band selection may work better. My Sony 7600 portable will tune upper, lower or manual sideband. Along with the very directional internal ferrite antenna. One of those may work. Quit reasonable too $$$.
If worse comes to worse, a "beverage Cab" antenna will be required. They are very direction towards the intended signal. And null the signals from the side. They consist of hundreds or even thousands of yards of wire laid on the ground. Pointed towards the radio transistor of your choice.

Are you inside a metal building and have you tried an outdoor long-wire AM antenna? At 50-miles you are probably too close to that station for sky-wave reception and not close enough for ground-wave coverage at night. To top that off, as someone else said, many stations are required to reduce power or use directional antennas at local sundown to prevent interference to other stations. If an outdoor antenna won't help, you may be stuck in that situation.

Building isn't metal. All sided with 1" hemlock boards and insulated with 2" polyI. Metal roof, though.

I'm on the side of a mountain top and don't get any direct radio waves. 1/4 mile away, in the valley, I would. Valley runs all the way to Albany.

The radio station is supposed be one of the super-power "Clear-Channel" stations. I have no idea though, if they power down at night, or not. But, I only get the drift between 8 and 11 PM. Then it comes in very clear again - all night if I had the energy to stay up. There's been a few times I've been up to 3 in the morning working on tractors - and radio was coming in perfectly after the ionospheric "bounce time."

I have not tried any sort of external antenna yet at my shop. I DO have one at the house hooked to a 1940s era Crosley tube radio. Just a 50 foot wire. It works good most of the time but always drifts a bit. But, that's what the old radios did anyway. I guess a real test would be to hook one of these modern radios to that wire antenna - at night, if I ever get around to it.

What about trying one of the two other banks of lights one at a time to see if they produce any interference. If isolated to the one bank, I'd start at the end of that run and begin disconnecting the hot wire to the ballasts one at a time after checking the connection at the breaker and any junction boxes.

I assume you can take the radio in the house and hook it to your long wire or even try the tv antenna. I'd probably try hooking it to the fence.

I got a ton of am/fm radios around here that won't pick up jack but I can sit in a vehicle and pick up everything with a car radio. Maybe get one with the antenna and transformer and try it. First pull your pickup into the shop to see what reception it gets.

All the am stations around here that were long range at night went spanish. Makes it tough to get monday night football anymore.

Let us know what works.

The only clear-channel stations I see in NY State are either in the city or in Rochester. Is the station perhaps part of the Clear Channel Communications network? They're all over the place and, though they might, it'd surprise me if that company owned a single station licensed for truly clear channel operation.
Clear channel listing

What frequency,station callsign?

Years ago, I had a night job and would listen to the "Trucking Bozo" Dale Sommars. From time to time he would talk about the "ground plane" of an AM antenna. Probably more to do with mobile radios though. He would say if the antenna on a truck was mounted on fiberglass body parts, add a ground wire to the frame from the antenna base. This was supposed to make the antenna work much better.
On the south east side of Des Moines, all of the local FM stations between 90 and 100 don't come in well no matter what vehicle I drive. The only exception is the oldies channel 93.3 since their antenna is on DSM's SE side.

Yes, it is a Clear Channels station. That list you linked to shows it (sort of) but does not give the full label and description.

It's WGY, 810 out of Schenectady, NY near Albany.
Your list shows it as San Fransiso, but that's only partially true.

810 is a Clear Channel brodasted in three places - WGY in Schenectady NY, KGO in San Francisco, and WKVM in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

http://www.njarc.ar88.net/Freq_list.pdf

810 WGY out of Schenectady,NY. It's in the super-power Clear-Channels list.


http://www.njarc.ar88.net/Freq_list.pdf

I began to laboriously hunt through a general search. Then found everything all neatly compiled on Wikipedia.

Here is your main offender way up in north east NB. Couldn't find an 810 station near Chicago.

CKLE-FM is a French language Canadian radio station broadcasting in Bathurst, New Brunswick at 92.9 MHz. It has been on the air since March 29, 1990 but the origins of the station before the first broadcast go back to 1987.

CKLE has a rebroadcaster located in Caraquet at 810 AM with the call letters CJVA.

CKLE


AM 810, Caraquet
First air date March 29, 1990 (origins go back to 1987)
Format French radio
Callsign meaning C(K)LE, derived from the French word for "key"
Owner Radio de la Baie Ltée
Website CKLE-FM

Others in canada are:

CBPY in Whitehorse, Yukon
CKJS in Winnipeg/Winterpeg, Manitoba

In the United States

KBHB in Sturgis, South Dakota
KGO (AM) in San Francisco, California
KLVZ in Brighton, Colorado
KSWV in Santa Fe, New Mexico
KTBI in Ephrata, Washington
KXOI in Crane, Texas
KYTY in Somerset, Texas
WCKA in Jacksonville, Alabama
WCTA in Alamo, Tennessee
WDDD (AM) in Johnston City, Illinois
WDMP (AM) in Dodgeville, Wisconsin
WEDO in Mckeesport, Pennsylvania
WEKG in Jackson, Kentucky
WEUS in Orlovista, Florida
WGY in Schenectady, New York
WHB in Kansas City, Missouri
WJJQ in Tomahawk, Wisconsin
WKVM in San Juan, Puerto Rico
WMGC (AM) in Murfreesboro, Tennessee
WMJH in Rockford, Michigan
WPIN (AM) in Dublin, Virginia
WQIZ in Saint George, South Carolina
WSJC in Magee, Mississippi
WSYW in Indianapolis, Indiana
WTHV in Hahira, Georgia
WXFO in Royston, Georgia
WYRE in Annapolis, Maryland

Hello jdemaris,
I don't know if it was alredy suggested to you.
Did you try plugging the radio into a different outlet?.
Guido.

J, I don't know about the hum but as a kid growing up in northern NH it was cool to listen to two AM stations that I believe were from western NY, WKBW and WPTR, They would come in only at night of course.Well a few months ago when I was driving by your place on the thru-way after dark I tried to get them. I remember that they were at the high end of the band, Have you ever come across these stations?

WKBW 1520 on the AM band. 50,000 watts

Did you know you can listen to WGY Schenectady on you computer, no RF interference. I listen to WSYR
on my computer, almost the same as WGY
WGY

I used an old car radio, Digital tuner, ran off of a battery to solve you very problem. I then ran an antenae cable and antenae outside of the shop. It did not totally eliminate the noise but reduced it to a tolerable amount.

Ok J,

It's just after midnight (EST) here.April 2nd. I wear a aluminum foil hat to get better reception on April 1st. And keep all lights off. David..........

all the noise related problems we've ever had at work have always been traced back to the neutral side. not enough capacity usually due to shared neutrals, also separate circuits when sharing long runs of 10' or more of conduit for ex. can amplify odd harmonics & they ride along the top of the sine wave just like ripple controllers work for off-peak. sometimes running more juice through the wire makes it worse & smetimes it saturates the neutral enough that the noise cancels out or has a hard time building amplitude. other times it makes it worse, similar to a poor ground in a DC circuit. a noisy ballast could possibly be eliminated as the source also. solid-state digital ballasts help too. good luck im no expert.

Thanks for looking, it's kind of interesting. Next time the French station comes on, I'll have to try to listen more closely and figure which one it is.

I speak French fairly well, but my French is from France, not Québec (formerly Holchelga) where they use a much older version of the language. Kind of like comparing DOS to Windows Vista. Half my family comes from the Three Rivers and Nicolet area of lower Canada, but my other half is from southern France - and the latter is the only language I picked up.

When my grandmother came here through Ellis Island from rural southern France - she immediatley hated New York. So, she moved to "Mount Royal", better known as Montreal. She was even more miserable there. She said that their French was so bad, she had to beg them to speak in English so she'd have some idea of what they were trying to say. Also, the priests kept bugging her to go to church. And, she barely knew English at the time. So, the language, French-Canadian Catholic church, and cold weather sent her back to New York for good.

It might be easier to learn olde French

Intended to say "beverage" antenna not "beverage cab". They are very direction and work rather well.
My french is limited to a few dozen words picked up in public school and Ottawa construction sites.
Unfortunately in south western Ontario during those days. French class was "open season" on the poor teacher.
Somebody could be inviting me out for a cold beer using the french language and I wouldn't clue in.
I was going to try 810 on the Sony last night but had other tasks to attend to. There is something around my place causing AM interference and I've yet to find it. Blasted fluorescent lamps are only a portion. Then again 6 million HP traveling down 500,000V lines at 60Hz. Being only 1100 yards from my radio doesn't help either.