Thunder storms

I haven't been on our local and very busy repeater for a week or so but got on today and struck up a conversation with a ham who hasn't been on here for 10 years or so.  Hes a retired nuke technician and it was an extremely interesting conversation.  Obviously, he couldn't give much detail about his work but what he could talk about was fascinating, so much so that our qso lasted better than an hour before his battery died.  We talked about the days before computers (slide rules and such).  Turns out we had a mutual friend, a now departed physicist who designed some early stuff and worked on the apolo project.
Anyway, that sparked a few others to join in.  I had my hf rig on 10 meters am in the background to listen for lightning.  Well, here comes the lightning.  I had to discontinue the conversation and unhook my antennas.  Dang! 
I should get on the srg repeater system more often. It's surprising how much knowledge our members have but don't talk about until the occasion presents itself.

How do you listen for lightning???

How do you listen for lightning???

You can hear the static crashes (crackle) on am or ssb modes, much like you can hear it on am broadcast frequencies in your car. Tune your radio to an unused frequency and you can hear it quite well.
Oops, I meant am not fm.

How do you listen for lightning???

You can hear the static crashes (crackle) on fm or ssb modes, much like you can hear it on am broadcast frequencies in your car.  Tune your radio to an unused frequency and you can hear it quite well.

ahhhhh ok 

AM in the car is horrible, can’t get anything lately & was reading AM in cars is going away 

been listening to 80’s bands on XM this trip

How do you listen for lightning???

You can hear the static crashes (crackle) on fm or ssb modes, much like you can hear it on am broadcast frequencies in your car.  Tune your radio to an unused frequency and you can hear it quite well.

ahhhhh ok 

AM in the car is horrible, can’t get anything lately & was reading AM in cars is going away 

been listening to 80’s bands on XM this trip

That's because the car makers want to cut costs (translation: hike profits) by not putting radios in their cars anymore.

Terry

How do you listen for lightning???

You can hear the static crashes (crackle) on fm or ssb modes, much like you can hear it on am broadcast frequencies in your car.  Tune your radio to an unused frequency and you can hear it quite well.

ahhhhh ok 

AM in the car is horrible, can’t get anything lately & was reading AM in cars is going away 

been listening to 80’s bands on XM this trip

That's because the car makers want to cut costs (translation: hike profits) by not putting radios in their cars anymore.

Terry

We don’t even have a traditional AM/FM radio but some kind of bastardized all in one unit that is more for information & navigation than anything

How do you listen for lightning???

You can hear the static crashes (crackle) on fm or ssb modes, much like you can hear it on am broadcast frequencies in your car.  Tune your radio to an unused frequency and you can hear it quite well.

ahhhhh ok 

AM in the car is horrible, can’t get anything lately & was reading AM in cars is going away 

been listening to 80’s bands on XM this trip

That's because the car makers want to cut costs (translation: hike profits) by not putting radios in their cars anymore.

Terry

We don’t even have a traditional AM/FM radio but some kind of bastardized all in one unit that is more for information & navigation than anything

Basically a smart phone in your dash. Makes it a lot easier to track you than an actual radio.

Terry

Terry

It’s got buttons & features I’ve still not figured out… heads up display that tracks your eyes and knows when you let go of the steering wheel

Been pushing buttons as wife drives retro figure it out

And people want the insurance company track their drivers habits for a 10% good driver discount

Flipping insane

The long story is that with EV the motor speed controllers make nasty electromagnetic interference, way worse than the popping you hear in an AM radio from running non resistor spark plug wires, and rather than go to the expense of trying to kill the EMI they'll just remove the AM band from your radio so you can't hear the nasty noise that would completely blank out the AM station you may want to hear. Which is a good fix to an extent considering that AM is almost dead and few would miss it (this will go ahead and kill AM broadcast) but it will still screw HF mobile operations. Of course they also forget that most emergency highway broadcasting is done on AM bands. But hey, too big to fail GM wants it, they gonna get it.

We saw lots of those signs that say tune to 1620 AM (or something) when flashing

But even when flashing other than Yellowstone park have never heard anything. Must be super low power

WHO 1040 out of Des Moines was who I grew up listening to. Mom was close friends with Ronald Reagan when he worked there