I borrowed the “good” car this morning my normally wife uses to get to work, only to discover it has no AM radio in the infotainment unit. Nor can you install your own apps.

I had to improvise.

First, I opened the Wi-Fi hotspot the car makes with a connection to a 4G cell tower. Then, using the Wi-Fi, I installed I Heart Radio onto my cell phone and enabled the station I wanted. Finally, I set up a Bluetooth connection from my phone back to the car to play my station thru the car’s speakers.

So that’s 4G to Wi-Fi to Bluetooth over several devices and programs.

As a kid I used to listen to AM using a length of wire wrapped around a block of wood, a pencil lead and sewing needle, and an earphone.

I do admit the 50 million transistor version had better sound.

 

Maybe you need the right fillings installed into your teeth.

 

As a kid I used to listen to AM using a length of wire wrapped around a block of wood, a pencil lead and sewing needle, and an earphone.

Mine was a Quaker Oats container wound with 18 AWG magnet wire, a 365 pF variable cap, a 1N34A germanium diode, a pair of 2000Ω headphones and a long-wire antenna leading out my bedroom window and strung under the house eaves.

Despite the tuning cap, there was only one station I ever received on that setup: WABC in New York. Its 50,000-watt transmitter and 600+ foot broadcast antenna were located in Lodi, NJ, only about 5 miles away, and it absolutely obliterated every other station. It came through so loud on the headphones I had to unplug them at night or I couldn't get to sleep.

Fun times...

 

Just to add that my wife located the AM radio. It was 3-4 menu levels down under the settings tab. Seems you have to enable the AM radio, it is off by default, where off means there is not the hint of that capability being there.

I forget what else she needed to do to get the AM icon to appear. It was not obvious nor intuitive. But we got it up with some effort.