First time that has happened. Im about 1000yrds from an AM christian radio station. I just called them and played their station thru my computer, they said they would check with engineers.

Are they just running "juiced" up today, does it even work that way? Im running conventional cable modem hardlined to desktop, no wifi or routers.

IIRC, power output levels are tightly controlled on broadcast stations by the terms of their license. Some AM stations have different powers for day/night operations.
If you are that close to the antenna, I'd suspect that the wires to your speakers are picking up the signal.
Some snap-on ferrites might help. Or wind the cables a few turns through some ferrite donuts.
Good luck, AM exclusion can be a challenge.

Best Regards, Eric

Well its gone now..i wonder is someone just  hit the NOS button and added a few more ponies to the signal

I must say, that dude they had on there yapping away was really getting into it....lol

I'd suspect something with your setup or the nearby environment is causing it.  Dissimilar metals or bad connections can act like a diode, detecting the station and injecting the audio into your equipment.  All sort of possibilities along those lines.

On Gilligan's Island once Gilligan had his mouth turn into a radio because of his fillings.

i remember that episode; saw it as a young kid & it stuck in my memory even as a wee lad.

I have ONE neighbor, no longer living there, said I was coming in over the speaker on his alarm system.  

Not on his computer, not on his stereo, nor his phone, nor the TV, or anything else, just the alarm system.  He
stated I would have to stop operating.

No one else has complained.  No other neighbors, and I asked.  My wife says no sign of my signal in the
house on any of the electronics there.

Just this one neighbor.

I suggested he call the alarm company and have them check the system.  He wouldn't, I finally found out,
because the system was already in the house from the previous occupant, and he did not subscribe to the
service.  He would have to subscribe and pay for a service call for them to come look at it.  He just ran it
to alert him if someone was trying to break in.  It was not monitored by the alarm company that installed it.

We went back and forth about this a little and I finally gave him copies of FCC rules regarding such things.  

In the case of this nearby AM station, I'd like to know exactly what they did that it could not be a problem,
then suddenly it was, and just as suddenly it was gone.

Magic.

I dont know what they did but when I called, within 1/2 hour it was gone, I did nothing different on my end, I didnt tighten any wires, didnt move anything around. They were nice when I called, I didnt act like a dick, I just said they were coming thru my speaker and put the phone by the speakers and she heard it, said they would check with engineer and that was that.

Every so often like I mentioned when I had my old tube tv, I would get the station thru the speaker on that. 900mhz cordless phones would pick it up pretty bad about 10-15 years ago. I dont have a landline, so dont worry about it.

Probably went out to the transmitter and did some 'Percussive Testing and Diagnosis'.



I lived in a trailer park once, was told that I was causing interference to one of the neighbors.

Kinda funny how that could have been happening considering we were gone for the weekend.



I think it was probably a neighbor with a electrically noise vacuum cleaner or mixer.

Or the fact that she was a crazy cat lady, probably that.



We have a licensed 100W(erp, TPO is 58W) FM broadcast transmitter at our home.

Antenna is about 100' from my scanner antennas, every once in awhile we can hear the

programming coming thru one of our scanners at a very low level

when it is squelched. Getting into the audio circuit somehow.

That is even with a FM band notch filter installed with the notch centered on our carrier frequency.



Being intermittent in nature, I wonder if  it comes and goes depending on what is

turned off or on in the house.  

House wiring coupling RF energy better or worse depending on wire length.

Other then that, no issues, well except for the RTL SDRs, poor broadbanded things get

creamed when tuning around the FM broadcast band.



If you ever need a plug and play options for MW broadcast interference, Kiwa Electronics

sells a nice filter. Can even order them custom built with a notch on that carrier

frequency that you have issues with. Used to work for Kiwa when they were in Yakima WA.

One of our customers was a ham operator that was next door (as within 100yrds) to a 50kW AM blowtorch.

Craig built his filter with one of the notches on that carrier, took care of the issue and

the customer was able to use the 160m band with no interference with the filter in place.



There are ways to filter out the RF energy by installing inductors and capacitors on the

affected devices. I don't know the power level so don't know if you are in the blanketing

coverage of that AM transmitter.  Be nice and their radio tech will more then likely be happy

to help you figure out how to filter your equipment so that it can function correctly.



I lived next door to a 1kW station once, for some reason my coax had a real nice charge on it when

disconnected, frequency counter said it was the next door transmitter. I don't know, could have been

charging it up somehow. Nothing like my 160m full wave loop antenna during a blizzard with almost to cold to snow, snow storm. Ouch! Found out where the arcing was coming from inside the MFJ tuner when I

disconnected the coax and touched the connector wrong.. Neon bulbs are your friend.



 

Here in Cedar Rapids, IA. one of our local AM stations, WMT is at 600khz. You can only imagine the problems that causes on VHF repeaters with a standard frequency split. They have been here for many years and most of the local repeaters have been adapted quite well to work around this issue.

From the Jimmy Hatlo collection...

No issues today and of all days I figured they would soup up the signal, lol.

I was working for an AM station, doing morning drive.  We had a terrible signal at night, but when we switched to the big stick during the day we got out quite good.

They were re-working the towers, and were shutting the station down at night.  I was getting all manner of angry calls about what f^$&&% dang commie BS were we putting out.  Turns out radio Moscow from Cuba was BOOMING in on feq when we were down.  Folks around here (at least back then) did not like their commies.

Anyway, one morning I come strolling in and fire up the station.  I flip the switch and go to record the plate current and power.  Well, the darn power was at like 80%.  Not good enough (I preferred a tad over 100%, and engineer was okay with that). I am scratching my head and pushing the button to increase the power but the power out isn't moving.

Suddenly the morning guy from the FM across the hall comes running in screaming, "SHUT IT DOWN, SHUT IT DOWN!" I look at him like he's crazy, but he screams, "SHUT IT DOWN, NOW!" So I shut it down.

Turns out the folks working on the tower left the guy wire they were working out hook to the back of their pickup truck and I dumping all the 30k of watts into the truck. That was why my power would not get to a decent place.  The tires on the truck were smoking--which is what the guy on the FM saw!



 

Fellow I worked for before, told stories about getting an arc started with a shovel between the static discharge balls.







He said it was fun to watch the modulation and that you could hear the audio in the plasma.

RF engineers know how to party..



He also said that one of his helpers peed on them. Which was an electrifying mistake.

I seem to recall that he said the tower was active, but that sounds deadly, so maybe the transmitter was

off and it was just wind static that hit the guy in the frank and beans.



I believe after work beer chugging was more then likely involved with such shenanigans.



Oh, and the stories of radio station wars were great also.





 

That's for sure



If you stand next to the matching circuit on an AM broadcast station you can hear the audio. It's kinda freaky.



Station engineers always have some freaky stories to tell. Crashing sounds from outside and sudden holes in the roof from falling ice, all manners of freaky arcing, close calls and direct hits from lightning strikes doing all sorts of wild stuff, the impossible to replace components that are always breaking...