The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum / Is This The Solution To AM Antennas Taking Up Expensive Land?

**Posted by RadioActive** February 21, 2025 11:05 am

Some of this is a bit beyond me, I'll admit, but the engineers who gather here will get the full picture. It's the story of an otherwise obscure relatively low power AM radio station in California that figured out how to put up its antenna in a small parcel of land and still get its signal out.

With some antenna lands now worth more than the stations they broadcast and owners giving up licences to sell that property, you have to ask - would it work here? And would it keep more AMs going?

Skirt Antenna Helps Reimagine AM Radio

**Posted by fybush** February 21, 2025 1:05 pm

Meh. It's better than being off the air entirely, to be sure, but it's still never going to be as good as a proper quarter-wavelength vertical tower. And it's not really new technology at all.

For a small station on the upper part of the dial (higher frequency = shorter wavelength = shorter tower), it could be a workable solution for something like a CINA or a CHTO, but then they're already using short monopole towers that do basically the same thing as this, except they use a helical spiral of wire instead of the skirt to improve the performance of the antenna. And they can already do it from a warehouse rooftop.