Not broadcast radio, but a helpful source of information via radio has or is coming to an end:
What you get/got on these freqs were current temp, wind speed/direction, dew point and a most difficult to find piece of info elsewhere, visibility.
There’s no mention where the NOTAM info is now available from.
Seems defence has the same view as our penny pinching country commercial broadcasters. Shame.
@gordo92 you might be able to answer this, but I’m told it’s awfully hard (ie impossible) to obtain any new parts for AM stereo TX gear these days, they’re simply not manufactured anymore?
Apparently that’s why 2CA ceased broadcasting in stereo - not because of a decision to turn it off, but rather a part in their gear crapped itself and no suitable replacement could be ordered anymore
Isn’t a lot of US AM HD Radio gear capable of AM Stereo? Seemingly stations need to pick one or the other, but I’ve read about stations that tried AM HD, but switched it off and instead went AM Stereo - one example here.
ANYTHING can be fixed … you only need 3 things… money, Time and a need to do it.
its a business thing… whats the return for having AM stereo? zero.
Did you look at the date? thats from 2009… id almost bet that station is silent or playing christian tunes by now!
A trend that may take off is pure HD with no analogue… this is a smart idea and the last chance the medium wave has (in the US anyway)
WLS is the Cumulus-owned heritage talk station in Chicago
my point was A LOT of things change in 11 years.
edit: here is a video about an all digital AM station
Oh I don’t dispute that, pleasing a few enthusiasts aside, there’s no great benefit in investing in it. It’s just that I’d heard that in this particular case there was in fact the will but not the way, hence the question
anything can be fixed 
there are a few AM transmitters being sold with stereo option but not the main players e.g nautel
I believe that the current crop of Nautel AM TXs DO have AM stereo capability built in.
Yep, the current Nautel NX Series AM TX’s come with AM Stereo built in, they also do HD & DRM, they are Tri-mode TX’s.
Sorry Yes you are right. the NX series do… the XR and J series dont
DRM isnt built in… optional extra on that one
A question for the technically minded, how high a treble response can you (legally) output on an AM signal? Is it just the 9kHz as per the AM channel spacing? I think that makes a huge difference to the listening experience too (if you have a radio capable of receiving that, which most don’t)
@radioengineer & @gordo92 have done more AM than me so can probably answer better, but I think you can actually go up to 15KHz or more if you wanted, but you’d have to high pass filter everything below 6KHz so you don’t have any wider audio bandwidth than 9KHz? That’d sound ridiculously shit though.
Nothing actually stopping you from going to 12KHz audio for a channel bandwidth of 24KHz, provided you don’t interfere with anyone else, because unless someone complains, ACMA don’t have the staff to monitor & investigate, same as why most overdrive the FM TX’s & deviate way more than the allowable bandwidth.
Or you could cut off arbitrarily at 5kHz like the last Magic did:
Which was absolutely appalling and unnecessary. Stupid management that deliberately put it in place. ACMA should have jumped all over them for that. BTW nothing to stop AM stations running audio to 15kHz if they wanted to. They used to back in the 60s through to the 80s on some of the better engineered stations.
Legally 30hz to 9khz audio TX
Most don’t care about how their audio sounds due to the fact that modern radios cut off anything about 3-4khz
In the case of 4WK we had it opened up to 15khz of audio but the audio is restricted by the 9.5-10khz filtering of the TX
Long answer short, only Allowed up to 9khz of audio but this day and age with the way ACMA are shorted staffed, you could TX 15khz and unless you annoy someone or interfere with another station you will not have a issue, but kinda not worth the extra hassle above 9k due to modern radios been very narrow, only worth it for nerds like me with old wide band receivers
Yes the super narrow bandwidth in my new i30 is highly annoying.
Tell me about it. Also distorts badly on FM with weak signals. A shame as the sensitivity and selectivity is very good.
I have a little pocket DAB/FM radio that does the same, great on bringing in the weak stations, but if they run anything over 110% mod it starts clipping the passband, and it is sounds real bad when the signal starts getting noise.
The worst part is I am now in NZ as of yesterday where they are allowed 256k bandwidth… oh and they tend to run it loud over here hehe 