[BC] IBOC reception report

[Mark Humphrey]

While heading to a project site in the Poconos earlier this week, I
tried to receive all of the New York AM IBOC stations, but only WABC
was strong enough that far west to decode on my JVC receiver.

I was quite surprised to see that WABC had the ability to force my
receiver into "HD Hold" mode.  Normally, the JVC radio will
automatically "blend" back to analog if it loses lock on the digital
signal, but upon tuning to WABC, it would immediately turn on the
"hold" indicator and mute until the digital audio was acquired -- and
would not revert back to analog when the digital reception was
overcome by power line noise, etc.  I had to switch to "auto" or
"analog hold" manually to work around this problem.

Also, I noticed WABC isn't delaying analog audio.  I assume they are
still in a "test" phase, but this is the kind of stuff that forms a
bad impression on early HD adopters.

On the way back here yesterday afternoon, digital reception of WKAP
1470 in Allentown was quite solid along the expressways (PA 33 and
I-78), but after exiting onto secondary roads (with power lines), the
coverage became intermittent.

Mark