Why does radio and satellite reception deteriorate when the sun goes down?
If you are trying to listen to an AM station, it is likely that the station cuts off their feed or at least drastically reduces their power at sundown. The reason that they do this is to avoid getting themselves in a scuffle with the FCC, because since AM signals travel further than FM signals, they interfere with other nearly identical frequency stations. This happens because radio signals travel further at night; they travel by skywave instead of groundwave. You’ll have less trouble listening to FM stations at night because FM radio waves go through the ionosphere instead of bouncing off the way AM radio waves do, so FM radio stations are less likely to be required to cut or reduce their power after sundown than AM stations.
Just as a little satellite humor, we sometimes have problems with our equipment when we try to locate the satellite in the sky. If the satellite is near the sun, our dish sometimes locks onto the sun. A couple of times I’ve seen when the sun crosses the path of our signal, the dish will start following the sun and we lose communications.
