• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

E-skip season has begun - 5/2/2017

C

crainbebo

Well, not counting the little opening I had on 1/9...
The start of the traditional summer Es season has begun! All relogs tonight, but MUF was up to 98 here in Yakima. A DXer in Phoenix had KIMO-107.3 Helena and KDXN-105.7 Dickinson ND.

7:00PM PT - 93.9 KINT El Paso, TX; good with TOH ID 'KINT El Paso', back into regional Mexican music. Relog, 96KW at 1271 miles. Also heard country on 96.3 (assumed KHEY), rock on 95.5 (assumed KLAQ), CHR on 93.1 (assumed KSII) and a little bit of SS on 97.5 (assumed KBNA). KHEY and KBNA would be new, I tracked 96.3 until it was clobbered by enhanced KRCW/Royal City...no ID whatsoever. KHEY is still needed. KSII and KLAQ would have been relogs.
7:08PM - 97.7 KLVO Belen, NM with Regional Mexican music, 'Lobo 97.7' IDs. Very strong and steady signal for over a half-hour. Relog, 98.4KW at 1077 miles.
7:12PM - UNID 88.3 SSer, didn't seem to parallel KRCW-96.3 (which is repeated on KNAI Phoenix) but may have been slightly off. KNAI has been heard many times anyways.
7:15PM - 95.1 KOLZ Corrales, NM; with R&B music and ID 'Hot 95.1', into commercials. Relog, 100KW at 1070 miles.
KOLZ and KLVO faded in and out the next half-hour before fading. Audio to be posted tomorrow. A decent start, hopefully more to come.
BTW...I am adding DTV to my DX list! I have acquired a Zenith DTT901 converter box and will receive a UHF antenna and a VHF dipole by Friday. There's lots of opportunities for channel 2-6 DT skip especially in SD, NE and KS.
 
I've only received E-Skip twice (and on he same day): 92.9 Jacksonville and 92.1 Nashville were my findings. I hope that I receive E-S this summer.
 
Tomgsinger said:
I've only received E-Skip twice (and on the same day):
92.9 Jacksonville and 92.1 Nashville were my findings.
I hope that I receive E-S this summer.
Click to expand...
Unlike extended tropospheric propagation,
E-skip is always most glorious on the lowest frequencies.
In the days of analog TV with antennæ,
we would start searching channels two through six,
then from the bottom of the FM band to the top.

My most fun experience with this mode happened four sunspot cycles ago
during a news event of national or international importance.
As I scrolled up through the reserved portion of the FM band (then, 88.1-91.9MHz),
my receiver would pop from one station to the next on every frequency,
each with slightly different audio characteristics, but all carrying the same NPR feed.
Of course, RBDS came many years later and I could not get any ID's.
 
Last edited:
CHBX-TV 2 Sault Ste. Marie, ON is still operating in analog, at least the last I heard. That's a good one to try early in the season.

My rooftop antenna in SE Michigan fell a few years ago, and my only VHF Low antenna is in the attic and not on a rotator. How many of you are still fully able to DX VHF Low without putting up a new antenna?
 
Last edited:
I haven't been able to join the latest round of e-skip festivities per se, but I knew something up a couple of days ago. Some of you may remember that I have a car radio which includes weather band. At a point about five miles from the local transmitter, I tuned in to get the forecast, and was greeted by noise underneath as well as splatter. "Hmm...e-skip season must be starting" was my exact thought. I tried a couple of other channels, which sounded a little like the graveyard channels on the AM band. I couldn't ID any of what I was hearing, except for Milwaukee, which wouldn't have been e-skip.
 
Believe there was some tropo up north several days ago. Not Es.
 
This used to be my favorite time of year for radio listening.

Now, I'm jealous of all you guys because there's no E-skip here in Hawaii.
 
However, the 1960 NAB Engineering Handbook has a graph that suggests that F2 Skip may be probable for a few hours per year up to 60 MHz. This would allow Channel 2 Skip from California to Hawaii. Too bad you're not within 2500 miles of CHBX-TV Analog Channel 2, as I think that would be much more likely. The graph is on Page 2-26 of the link below, courtesy of David's great archive.

http://www.americanradiohistory.com...Section-2-NAB-Engineering-Fifth-Edition-3.pdf
 
Last edited:
Tropo is sometimes possible to California. Someone on here (Don Mussel I think?) heard XETRA 91.1 on the Big Island once. The 2,500-mile tropo duct happens 1 or 2x a year.
 
If the conditions look good for tropo to the west coast, I've heard that the first station I should listen for is 103.3 from Santa Barbara.

Their transmitter is almost 3,000 feet?
 
hawaiigar said:
I've heard that the first station I should listen for is...almost 3,000 feet?
Click to expand...
Height is totally unimportant on E-skip,
only power at high angles,
such as a class C that uses a 4-bay antenna
 
Actually any power, height, etc. is unimportant. I've gotten everything from 100KW blasters in Nebraska to a 94W LPFM in Westcliffe, CO (mind you quite a ways into the mountains), to 3/6KW class As from various places, E-skip of course.
 
Last edited:
Class As were easier DXing with Sporadic E though when they were on dedicated Class A channels. Now with markedly more powerful stations, especially B, C2, C1, C0, and C, they get swamped in many cases. Somewhat isolated Class As like on the end of Long Island are more likely than in the middle of a bunch of other cochannel stations.
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
Class As were easier DXing with Sporadic E though when they were on dedicated Class A channels.
Click to expand...
Very true!
So, there was this small town class A station inviting listeners across some nearby border to call collect (remember collect calls?) to talk about anything.
Of course I jumped on it and started telling him about radio propagation from a couple kilo-miles away, but how much he understood and believed me was obvious.
So the last thing I told him was to look at their phone bill when it came in and he would know from where I called. That was then!
 
The late Talk Show Host Dave Barber used to tell out of town listeners to call collect, and I was listening on WTRX 5000 Watts Day/1000 Watts Night on 1330 when his guest was Art Vuolo, discussing Home Video, circa 1980. I called from a place that was 100 miles away and I WAS listening. Art made a joke about knowing that no one would be calling from more than 10 miles away at Night just before I called. Art had videotaped the show, and when Dave died a couple years ago, Art released video of that show as part of a Memorial. My call is reportedly on that videotape. I asked Art what the lowest price a Home VCR would ever be and he said as I recall, "never below $100."

When the DTV switchover finally came in 2009, analog stations could still broadcast for a while as "Nightlight" service to direct you what to do to view their station if you had ignored all the warnings. I had a Channel 5 on Sporadic E about 1000 miles away on Nightlight service, and I called and talked to their Chief Engineer and told him I was watching it in Michigan. He asked me what Sporadic E was! As I have been told, many engineers did not come up from the Ham ranks these days, and many are "IT Guys and Board Changers". From that experience, I suspect that it's true.
 
Last edited:
ai4i said:
Height is totally unimportant on E-skip,
only power at high angles,
such as a class C that uses a 4-bay antenna
Click to expand...


No, I was specifically referring to tropo being that E-Skip to Hawaii is almost impossible.

At least with tropo enhancement, signal strength matters.

Is the same thing the case with extreme long distance tropo ducting?
 
hawaiigar said:
No, I was specifically referring to tropo being that E-Skip to Hawaii is almost impossible.
Is the same thing the case with extreme long distance tropo ducting?
Click to expand...
Heigth matters, but not the way you think.
Both the transmitting station and the receiving antenna need to be inside the "duct", the "funnel", the "tube", the "pipe".
If either is too high or too low, the signal could fly right over your head, but someone much farther from the station might log it.
With tropos, ERP directed toward the horizon is all-important.

Here is a good practical example of heigth vs ERP.
Both of the following stations are on 88.9
WDNA is south of Miami and transmits 6.3KW from 350 meters.
WQCS is north of West Palm Beach and transmits 100 KW from 133 meters
Both have similar sized local coverage areas
Fort Lauderdale is much closer to WDNA and gets a weak but interference-free, listenable signal every the day.
WQCS visits every night and squashes the Miami station throughout much of Broward county.

During hot days, I am a heigth man because higher "look angles" reduce multi-path fluttering,
But for any kind of extended propagation well beyond the horizon, power is the only thing that matters.
I would guess that if you are shooting for Chicago or the Big Apple from far away,
100 KW WMBI and 46 KW WFUV would offer you the best chances for success.
 
Last edited:
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom