Station capture

A phenomenon occuring in the receipt of concurrent FM signals on the same frequency, in which only the strongest signal will be used, and the weaker signals ignored such that the recipient will be unaware of them. By contrast, conflicting AM signals will usually interfere so that neither is intelligible, but recipients (though not the senders) may have an indication that two parties are attempting to transmit and can thus request re-transmission. This is often cited as the reason that AM is used on the Air Band, where a "lost" transmission could be critical.