820 WWFD Frederick, MD being received at Sunset in Connecticut – Crazy DX Report!

What you are about to witness is miraculous! 820 WWFD AM – Digital ONLY “HD Radio”!



Videos are a difficult monster to work with.  Seeing as I’ve not much experience in trying to post one on the internet, you’ll understand if it takes a couple of tries before everything works properly. I’d like to invite comments from broadcasters, people involved with manufacturing for the radio industry, and the FCC. Of course, I’d LOVE to hear from Dave Kolesar, who is the station manager.

WWFD is a digital-only radio station, which at this time is operating under experimental authority from the FCC. Perhaps at some point, that will become a permanent authority or regular AM Digital license. This is classified as emission MA3 – Digital “HD” only. To be quite honest, my interest in this station was piqued after reading some articles and Facebook posts from Radio Blogger, newsman and the guy behind that Tower Calendar every year, Scott Fybush! I’ve been monitoring WWFD almost every night during critical hours to see if that station can be decoded. Certain nights, yes. Others, not so much.  This is a companion post to our other post about WWFD.

Received in Beacon Falls, Connecticut, this seems to prove that All-Digital AM would work, since all the RF power that normally goes to the analog signal is applied to the digital signal, and it’s in the center of the frequency, not added to the right and left ‘sides’ of the analog signal.

It’s probably too late to help save AM radio, but it might extend the useful life of the medium wave band IF manufacturers can be convinced to make HD receivers again. As of now, there are very few out there, but eBay has a few.

There is a pretty substantial write up about WWFD on WikiPedia.  In case you don’t want to be bothered to go there, here’s the first few paragraphs which describe this very unique radio station:

WWFD (820 AM HD Radio) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to serve Frederick, Maryland. The station is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting through licensee Washington DC FCC License Sub, LLC and simulcasts the freeform programming branded as The Gamut originating on the HD3 subchannel of sister station WTOP-FM. The Gamut programming is also available on the HD3 subchannels of sister stations WTLP and WWWT-FM, as well as on FM translators W232DG (94.3 Frederick) and W252DC (98.3 Reston, Virginia).

WWFD also carries Washington Capitals, Washington Nationals, and Navy Midshipmen sports programming originating on sister station WFED.^[1] Sunday syndicated programming on The Gamut includes Music and the Spoken Word (with WFED),^[2] Anything Anything with Rich Russo and Little Steven’s Underground Garage.

WWFD is the only licensed radio station in the United States that does not broadcast a traditional analog signal. Instead, the station only runs a digital HD Radio signal under experimental authorization from the Federal Communications Commission.^[3]

The above is quoted from WikiPidia at the following link: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWFD

And now, here’s my home video – which I sincerely HOPE will work within this player!!

[gs-fb-comments]
Hey now! Do you think you could spare a moment? Airchexx.com survives, literally, on the donations from people just like you. The ads you see take about 3 months to build up enough revenue just to get a small check. If you enjoy these archives, which so many out there do indeed rely upon, could you spare a little bit of cash? All of it goes to the hosting fees and miscellaneous costs of running this website. Thank you in advance.