Cyberdad's Excellent 2014 Road Trip Adventure

[crainbebo]

610 was probably KNML Albuquerque, NM "The Sports Animal".

-crainbebo

 

[rbrucecarter5]

When I was in Vail the last two nights, I thought I might be in a great FM DX spot up in the mountains. Nope. Vail is in a deep valley surrounded by those mountains pretty much on all sides. All I could get (on an admittedly not great FM radio) was about a half dozen locals.

If you take that drive through the Rockies, you can get some pretty incredible stuff on FM when you are near the top.

 

[romer979fm]

If you take that drive through the Rockies, you can get some pretty incredible stuff on FM when you are near the top.

getting off topic...but last spent last weekend just north of Nevada City, CA 4000ft elevation (at the edge of the Tahoe National Forest): did an FM auto-scan on Tecsun PL-606...and found 84 FM stations...including all Sacramento and most of the San Francisco FMs. not tropo....they remained steady for three days. the sheer number and strength of signals was surprising. daytime AM was only 830 KNCO Grass Valley & 1530 KFBK Sacramento

 

[cyberdad]

610 was probably KNML Albuquerque, NM "The Sports Animal".

-crainbebo

Thanks.... I figured I was probably too far away for KCSP.

And, rbrucecarter, I didn't DX driving through the Colorado mountains. Between the traffic and the numerous construction zones, I needed to keep my wits about me! And then, when I got to Vail, I really liked the place....but it basically turned out to be a very enclosed valley area. That basically made for lousy FM and AM daytime DX where I was.

But things did get interesting on the AM band at night. I would've liked to have had the chance to hang around longer, because the former "regional" and "graveyard" channels had quite a few stations that were able to overcome the slop and stay solidly on top. For example, 1230 was vacant during the day. But during one of my two nights there, I had 20 minutes of a syndicated talk show that stayed continuously on top before finally fading before I could ID it.

 

[crainbebo]

FM DXing is more interesting not only in mountain towns, but heading toward tops of mountains. Hiking with a portable FM radio to scan at the top is a nice bonus.
When I was up at Bear Creek Mountain near Rimrock, over 7300 feet, I had a huge variety of FMs, some channels 4 deep. Picked up the 104.5 KBNW translator, 150 watts out of Bend OR 170 miles away. Plus a few Eugene/Corvallis stations, all the Portlands, Seattle, Eastern WA, some Spokane, some Pullman/Moscow (KHTR 104.3 comes to mind) and BC was possible as well especially Vancouver blasters like CFMI 101.1.

-crainbebo

 

[cyberdad]

FM DXing is more interesting not only in mountain towns, but heading toward tops of mountains. Hiking with a portable FM radio to scan at the top is a nice bonus.
When I was up at Bear Creek Mountain near Rimrock, over 7300 feet, I had a huge variety of FMs, some channels 4 deep. Picked up the 104.5 KBNW translator, 150 watts out of Bend OR 170 miles away. Plus a few Eugene/Corvallis stations, all the Portlands, Seattle, Eastern WA, some Spokane, some Pullman/Moscow (KHTR 104.3 comes to mind) and BC was possible as well especially Vancouver blasters like CFMI 101.1.

-crainbebo

That's right up there with the sort of stuff that happens on FM in airplane. On one of my trips to visit my daughter in London, I was getting stuff from Ireland....about 400 miles before we reached it. I'm especially impressed with the catch from Bend.

 

[crainbebo]

KXDD was way strong, but I was able to find a sweet spot, and pull in KWPK 104.1 Bend, OR, stereo and all. Was a new catch as well as many many others.

-crainbebo