Conservatives say liberals want to kill talk radio. But there’s plenty else on the AM dial – much of it essential

  • I have been under the lifelong impression that FM travels farther than AM, for some reason I have “about 60 miles and quality drops gradually” vs “about 90 miles and quality drops suddenly” stuck in my head as a statistic from childhood. I’m pretty sure it was something that my father told me as a child. Now that I’ve been education in radiation, I’m going to look up and see if he lied to me and I, like a 7 year old fool, believed him.


    Typical MF radio stations can cover a radius of several hundred miles from the transmitter, with longer distances over water and damp earth.

    That’s AM.

    VHF radio waves propagate mainly by line-of-sight, so they are blocked by hills and mountains, although due to refraction they can travel somewhat beyond the visual horizon out to about 160 km (100 miles).

    That’s FM.

    I really hate my dad sometimes. What a motherfucker.