On Tue, 31 Jul 2018 04:02:46 -0400, micky wrote:

Satruday, july 28, at 10:50AM I was driving through Westminster Md,
listening to 88.1 FM, Baltimore,and I was getting two copies of the same
sounds, one a second or so delayed compared to the other.

This went on for at least 5 miles, at least 10 minutes.

It was nearly impossible to tell what was being said.

How could this happen?

It's a rural area with no very tall buildings and even if there were a
reflection, it would not reflect at me everywhere along a 5 mile line.

I've been there many times before, usually listening to the same
station, and it never happened before. So I don't think there is a
second station on the same frequency in radio range.


Could it be that the transmitter itself was sending out two copies of
the sound, one second apart?


After about 10 minutes, it stopped and the sound was good again.

Well, a one second delay is not possible on the earth - the signal path
would have to be about 500,000 miles.

What I think it could be is two stations running the same program
material (LOTS of stations operate at least part of the day from common
network feeds) and there was a slight delay between the feeds they were
getting. (Most of this network stuff is now handled over the internet.)
But, usually, stations relatively nearby do not operate on the same
frequency.

One other possibility is that somebody at the station goofed and started
TWO instances of the network streaming application, and they were getting
slightly out-of-time buffers. I have done this many times when listening
to material on the internet. The 10 minutes of this might be how long it
took for a nearly listener to get through and report the problem. Or,
the local manager only checks the broadcast every so many minutes to make
sure they are still on the air.

Jon