It took me long enough to figure it out but here goes.

Every day I’m driving to work I have this entertainment deficit so the only way to keep awake is to turn on the radio. It contains a tape slot, too, but I’ve discarded all my tape related devices and media years ago which leaves me with merely one horribly worn down Pink Floyd live recording that I unearthed during the move. That’s why using the available radio stations is my only hope.

Unfortunately the frequency modulation mode of this radio is kinda broken, I suspect the channel seeking mechanism is at fault. In fact I can manually tune to stations and hear them clearly, it’s just that seeking them doesn’t work. My radio however seems to believe that if a the radio station isn’t seekable, it’s not a radio station – and it switches itself off after one minute. I could save one radio station’s frequency to one of the slot buttons and hit it that button every 59 seconds – but that’s hardly a permanent solution.
Anyway, FM radio stations are not as informative in my opinion because they’re usually local and broadcast a lot of music which I don’t feel like listening to.
So I decided to use amplitude modulation mode, despite its horrible transmission quality. I’m receiving BBC and CNN as well as a German radio station all of which provide more than enough interesting information, news and interviews.
Occasionally however, I encounter weird interference peaks which are unbearably noisy and loud, usually twice per travel. Interesting enough they only occur while crossing the railway lines. Furthermore there’s one part of the road which leads along the railway track for about two kilometers during which it’s impossible to understand anything from any AM channel for a minute or so. All these occurrences of interference are not just inducing noise, they also amplify the intensity of the signal.

Obviously the amplitude of a signal is much more sensitive to interference than its frequency plus the electricity supply circuits of railway tracks must carry quite a high voltage, given that its field is responsible for the interference of radio waves.

I guess I should just replace this 15 year old radio with an MP3-player sometime soon.