Driving Your Mazda; Radio Reception; Station Mixing- Page 222

Driving Your Mazda

5-86

Radio Reception

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AM Characteristics

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Station Mixing

AM signals bend around such things as
buildings and mountains and bounce off
the ionosphere. Therefore, they can
reach longer distances than FM signals.
But because of this, two stations may
sometimes be picked up at once on the
same frequency.

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FM Characteristics

An FM broadcast range usually extends
up to about 25 to 30 miles (40 to 50 km)
from the source. Because of extra coding
needed to break the sound into two chan-
nels, stereo FM has even less range than
monaural (nonstereo) FM.

FM transmitter signals are similar to
beams of light because they don’t bend
around corners, but they do reflect.

Unlike AM signals, they cannot travel
beyond the horizon. That’s why FM sta-
tions can’t reach the great distances AM
stations can.