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Most memorable E skip event on the FM Dial

M

michigandxer

What is your most memorable E skip event on the FM dial of all time that you guys remember? For me it was 2011 in early June sometime. My Uncle came to visit from Mississippi up here in the U.P. of Michigan. We were all getting in the car after going to dinner that night heading back to my parents house. I noticed stations fading in and out and I realized we were getting an E skip event. I was listening and identified a K Love station on Jackson MS! I kept flipping around and all these MS and Louisiana stations were coming in. My Uncle wasn't paying attention to what was going on at the time on the radio. I turned around and asked him you ever heard of a K Love station in Jackson and he was like Yeah I listen to it all the time! I was like I am picking it up here right now! Then I showed him for proof and he was floored. He was like OMG how are you getting that up here? He was like that is the same station I listen to back home when he listened to the D.J.'s voice and local programming. I told him you brought these stations up here lol.

Then June 30th 2007 it was a hot humid day especially for up here and those days are very few but it was 90 degrees and ran into town (Escanaba that morning) which is 6 miles east of where my parents live. I was living with my parents at that time. Anyway's as I got into downtown Escanaba at about 11 A.M. I tuned into the radio and the E skip was intense already. Louisiana stations were booming in and wiping out every signal except for the local channels but even the local channels had some E skip trying to come into the background. I got back home around 2 and the skip continued nonstop for the rest of the day. As the day went on I started getting Texas stations booming in and then it shifted to New Mexico and even Mexican stations were booming in! As the skip was coming to an end about 9:00 that night it was like a Grand Finale. All of a sudden stations from all over the country were booming in from Florida to Kentucky. It was awesome! Then it ended. Anyone have any memorable ones?
 
i was 10 years old. i was so young i didn't even know what FM e-skip was.

1986 - 94.9 Tallahassee Florida received in a parking lot in Burlington Massachusetts.

My father went into the supermarket for a minute and I waited in the car tuning around on the radio.
 
July 24, 2012.

Huge opening from the NE into Florida.

It was so great to hear FM stations from back home where I grew up.
 
From Midway USA (as the Kansas license plate once read)

I used to do a lot of springtime DXing on the old analog TV but not so much FM radio. In the Philly area 100.3 had been vacant from 1973 to 1982. In the summer of '78 I'm tuning and I hear baseball play-by-play. It wasn't the Phillies so I started listening. Turns out it was the Kansas City Royals. Station ID gave the location as Colby, KS. I don't remember the call letters but today it's KRDQ - The Ride.

TV Dxing back then was common in the Spring and Summer. From the Philly area on analog TV it was usually channels 2, 4 and 5. We picked up Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, St.Louis, Little Rock, various Texas cities, Birmingham, AL, Daytona Beach FL, Winnepeg, MN, Thunder Bay, ON, and Quebec City, QC (in French). There were other stations too, but I can't recall all of them. Might have picked a some Mexican or Cuban stations in Spanish. All those with rabbit ears or a roof-top antenna. Those were the days.
 
gar fla said:
July 24, 2012.

Huge opening from the NE into Florida.

It was so great to hear FM stations from back home where I grew up.
Click to expand...

I remember that one as well up here. I was on my way to a biking event that night and I remember that year was a terrible year for Dxing and that event I had openings to MS and LA. That one was intense.
 
How can you tell by those clouds if you are getting an E skip event? I live in Upper Michigan so how could I tell if I am in an event.
 
You look for clouds above 90 MHz that are about 400 to 500 miles away from your location.

But seeing that on a map doesn't necessarily mean you will be hearing anything.

More often than not when I see that, there's nothing coming in but it's sure worth looking anyway.

It depends on exactly how high up the Es clouds are forming too.

On that big day July 24, 2012, there were clusters of Es clouds well up into the 130 to 150 MHz range half way between here and the northeast.

But there have been some times where I happened to listen to the radio first and hear E Skip and then when I looked at the real time map, there weren't even any Es clouds showing up anywhere as high in frequency as the FM band. There were only clusters in the 50 to 70 MHz range at the time.
 
Probably a combo of two different openings. 7/29/07 (my first ever E-skip catch, KTRA 102.1 Farmington, NM from Bothell, WA, 1050 mi+) and then 6/22/11. That only had two new catches, but one of them was a strong 200 watter from western Colorado (KDBN 101.1 Parachute, CO // KKNN 95.1). I have never caught a 200W station via Es since! The same night I had some tentative double hop with a 95.1 playing "Give Me Everything" Pitbull/Ne-Yo. Matched KORQ Abilene, TX's playlist (1582 mile double hop) but by the time I checked again to confirm, KATC from CO had taken over, single hop. I swear that was 2xEs however I had for a few seconds.

-crainbebo
 
Most memorable is probably getting 93.7 KTZZ Conrad, MT for two reasons.
1) It came in over semi-local WKAD
2) It ran the same satellite format as local 94.1 WWKR
 
It was me the article was referencing hearing Montreal area stations from Knoxville, TN (French and English). Also had Buffalo and Rochester before things moved west, including Kansas and Iowa. Other memorable catches were a few seconds of a Radio Reloj in Cuba and the Caymans on 104.1. Long Island from Western Indiana and Boston driving through Central Wisconsin as well
 
For me it was a summer day in 1994 (late July or August, IIRC). Car radio on the north shore of Lake Superior just outside of Thunder Bay, ON. High bluffs overlooking the lake and Central Florida stations all over the dial.
 
Unregistered said:
I used to do a lot of springtime DXing on the old analog TV but not so much FM radio. In the Philly area 100.3 had been vacant from 1973 to 1982. In the summer of '78 I'm tuning and I hear baseball play-by-play. It wasn't the Phillies so I started listening. Turns out it was the Kansas City Royals. Station ID gave the location as Colby, KS. I don't remember the call letters but today it's KRDQ - The Ride.
Click to expand...

Mine was also a baseball game--Jack Buck and the St. Louis Cardinals coming in on FM in Ocean City, New Jersey, two blocks from the beach! It turned out to be KWPM-FM in West Plains, Missouri. Looks like that's now KSPQ on 93.9.
 
In 1975 OR '76 when I was stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I heard a Class A in Morgantown, WV pretty clear, in STEREO! Caught the ID, but time has faded that. That was about 1,373 miles! It was probably what is now WCLG-FM, but they would have been 3 kW back then.
 
100.3 Colby back then was KXXX-FM. KXXX is still used on 790 AM in Colby.

-crainbebo
 
May of 1990, in Calgary Alberta. I was still in high school then. FM radio was something that I and my classmates just didn't listen to. But one day I decided to see what was going on. Back then Calgary only had 8 FM stations...90.9, 92.1, 93.7, 95.9, 102.1, 103.9, 105.1 and 107.3. Note that HUGE gap between 95.9 and 102.1. I noticed a station between 92.9 and 93.7 playing the doors. Knowing that there was no local station there I wondered what was going on. Then the ID hit and it was Flagstaff Arizona. I was shocked. I tuned to see if there was something wrong with the radio and noticed every spot on the dial was full. It lasted all day and every FM station in Arizona was in, loud and clear with no fading. FM radio suddenly was interesting, as we didn't have hit music on FM back then. That year E skip happened about every 3rd day and it was always a different part of the states. I kept hoping to hear stations from Iowa I was familiar with, and a couple of months later there they were. It made me homesick listening to KRNA so many hundreds of miles away like a local.
 
In 1985 I picked up these stations in Rome, GA which is 65 miles northwest of Atlanta

93.3 KTCL FT Collins, CO
97.3 KBCO Denver CO
 
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