On Aug 2, 9:54 am, Doug Smith W9WI wrote:

There really aren't that many AM transmitters left -- offhand I can think
of St. John's (NL), Windsor, Winnipeg, Regina (Watrous), Edmonton,
Calgary, and Vancouver. The four on the Prairies all have FM relays
within the city centre, so I'd imagine the majority of the audience is
listening on FM even there. Apparently you *can* specify an AM frequency
in the AF field - I've seen it done - though while you can direct a
receiver *from* FM *to* AM you obviously can't do it the other way around.

There are still Radio 1 repeaters on AM in small towns. All the new
stuff is on FM. There was a major stink a few years ago when CBC
Toronto traded in their old AM frequency for the last available FM
frequency in the Toronto/Hamilton/Buffalo area.

We played with DAB for a while on L band, but have quietly walked away
from it. There's just one multiplex still on the air here in Vancouver.

Yeah, that's unfortunate. Your system provides more choice, better
quality, and no interference to the existing analog service. I suppose
the lack of economies of scale with the U.S. market doomed it. The CRTC
is now considering allowing our IBOC system. (and the CBC has tested it in
Toronto and Peterborough) They seem VERY leery of authorizing it on AM
though.

The main push for digital radio here is now Sirius. We were using
totally standard Eureka 147, albeit at a different frequency than
Europe. It works, but suffers from spotty coverage due to lousy
transmitters - if they had continued to build it out, it might work
better. But the one piddly little transmitter left on Mount Seymour
gives surprisingly good coverage. I bought a little DAB radio at
Radio Shack, and it works just fine.

One issue that has been raised as a stumbling block to DAB in
the Americas is that multiplexes require stations to share a
frequency - stations that are otherwise competitors.

The only remaining multiplex here has the three CBC English
networks and the two CBC French networks. The other multi-
plexes, before they were turned down, had stations owned by
the same companies on them (Corus, CHUM).

We (hams) have oodles of bandwidth in our microwave
bands. We could play with this stuff too.

Laura Halliday VE7LDH "Non sequitur. Your ACKS are
Grid: CN89mg uncoordinated."
ICBM: 49 16.05 N 122 56.92 W - Nomad the Network Engineer