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Big FM opening between Mobile-Pensacola and S Florida this morning

tomservo

tomservo

I just logged a whole mess of new stations, including one over 500 miles away. And it all happened by complete accident. I had been streaming some Netflix on a tablet and was using my little Sony Bluetooth dongle… after I was done and ready to go to bed at 6 am, on a whim I flipped on the built-in FM tuner. It's quite poor and I rarely hear anything out of the ordinary with it, it's strictly for local stuff. So imagine my surprise when I heard Moody Radio South on 89.3, mentioning Delray Beach and a bunch of highways I'd never heard of. Turns out it was WRMB in the West Palm Beach market, and it was blasting in despite being on a first adjacent to a Class C local. Here's a list of stations that are either new to me or so rare that I've only heard them a few times in 7 years… This doesn't include semi-DX from Biloxi, New Orleans, Panama City, Dothan, Hattiesburg or Meridian, because I actually hear those enough to be not unusual.

88.1 - WAYF - West Palm Beach, FL (co-channel local to Pensacola's WUWF)
89.3 - WRMB - Boynton Beach, FL (first adjacent local)
90.5 - WBVM - Tampa, FL (RDS)
93.3 - WFLZ - Tampa, FL
95.7 - WBTP - Clearwater, FL
96.3 - WJIZ - Albany, GA (first adjacent local)
97.3 - WGEX - Albany, GA (first adjacent local)
97.9 - WXTB - Tampa, FL
98.9 - WBZE - Tallahassee, FL (first adjacent local)
99.1 - WEDR - Miami, FL (RDS)
99.3 - WLRQ - Cocoa, FL
99.5 - WKAA - Willacoochee, GA
100.1 - WZJZ - Port Charlotte, FL (RDS, first adjacent local)
100.3 - WOBB - Tifton, GA
100.5 - WHHZ - Newberry, FL (RDS)
101.9 - WHYY - Montgomery, AL
102.1 - WNUQ - Albany, FL
102.3 - WMBX - Jensen Beach, FL
102.5 - WHPT - Sarasota, FL
103.1 - WIRK - Indiantown, FL (RDS)
103.5 - WFUS - Tampa, FL
104.5 - WKAK - Albany, GA
104.9 - WHTF - Tallahassee, FL
105.1 - WKUB - Blackshear, GA
105.5 - WOLL - Hobe Sound, FL (RDS)
105.9 - WVGA - Lakeland, GA
106.1 - WSTH - Alexander City, AL
106.3 - WUUB - Jupiter, FL
106.7 - WOKA - Douglas, GA
106.7 - WXXL - Tavares, FL
106.9 - WBPT - Birmingham, AL
106.9 - WPLL - Cross City, FL
107.7 - WEGC - Sasser, GA
107.9 - WEAT - West Palm Beach, FL

This my first time hearing Orlando, West Palm, Miami and Tampa since I moved to the Alabama gulf coast. I've heard Tallahassee and Albany both only 1-3 times in seven years, and certainly not this many stations all at once. I wound up staying up all morning, but it was worth it! :cool::cool::cool:
 
Wow, I'm only a few miles away from you for this week and next, but I missed this one. Hopefully, it'll re-open this evening and/or tomorrow morning. I'm on the 11th floor of a 12-story building directly on the gulf, so it should be a primo spot for skip from the Florida peninsula. As it is, from experience, I know that my location is almost unfailingly fantastic for summer tropo. For example, New Orleans FMs are regulars more often than not from about 160 miles away during the warm weather months.
 
Indeed I hope it "sparks up" again and you can enjoy some of that. A friend mentioned that someone he knew up in Huntsville also had similar reception, so it wasn't confined to just this area.

New Orleans wafts in a surprising amount, even in the winter. Seems I always miss the big summer tropo events, so this one was a pleasant surprise. Usually what happens is I'll turn the radio on and Hattiesburg and Panama City will be about all I hear that's not local. Or New Orleans. They're distant, but not distant enough!
 
It's strange that I've never picked up a station from south of Tampa. I have experienced several multi-day openings that brought in stations from Ontario.
 
Good to hear you got some nice tropo outside of the main season, tomservo.

When I lived in Tampa, the spring/early summer tropo events brought in stations often from Jacksonville, Savannah, the panhandle, and even west to New Orleans.

But stations from Miami were a rarity for some reason.

TV DXing was very fun during those conditions back in the analog TV days.

When it got intense, the local stations would run a little memo across the bottom of the screen saying "Atmospheric conditions beyond our control are causing interference with your TV reception".

With only rabbit ears on the TV, I could sometimes null out the local stations and other stations would briefly dominate.

You knew the tropo was real good when you didn't only get those 'lines' on the screen but also those rolling 'bars' that are common with E Skip.

When the bars showed up, that meant the signal was coming in from a location at least 300 miles away because of how the TV stations set up their specific broadcast frequencies for the minimal amount of co-channel interference when tropo events happen.
 
DXing here in Ohio is considerably different than down south, of course, but I remember a handful of occasions in the 90s where after big summertime storms, the TV dial would open up here in Columbus and signals would roll in from the west. Dayton, Cincinnati and even Indianapolis stations were the most frequent visitors when this happened. Easiest catches of those, as I remember, were usually WHIO (7) and WKEF (22) from Dayton and WLWT (5) from Cincinnati. I swear 13 from Indianapolis came in once when I checked.
As much as I enjoy the reception digital TV provides, I do occasionally wish I could DX as in the analog days. I don't have an antenna that's remotely capable of picking up Dayton or even Zanesville stations, and living in a townhome I am not able to affix an antenna to the roof.
 
schmave said:
Easiest catches of those, as I remember, were usually WHIO (7) and WKEF (22) from Dayton and WLWT (5) from Cincinnati.
Click to expand...
WHIO (RF-41) and WLWT (RF-35) would be much more strongly enhanced today, WKEF (RF-18) would be about the same.
 
One of my best tropo experiences of all time came Veterans Day Weekend 2007 in Tampa. There was a very clear opening that spanned the entire Texas Gulf Coast and New Orleans. In Clearwater, New Orleans' 93.3 briefly overtook WFLZ, which, as we know, is a local blowtorch.
 
Congrats, Tomservo. Those are great new GA and FL catches - and so many of them!

It surely was an awesome and unexpected tropo opening. Baton Rouge stations (WFMF, WYNK, WRKF, etc.) were booming in like locals here. At 12:40 a.m. CT, I heard a weak station on 102.5 that didn't match anything in my logs. It turned out to be WHPT "The Bone" in Sarasota, FL. It's my furthest tropo logging by far at 1,005 miles!

https://soundcloud.com/zzzimbob/whpt-on-1025-mhz-1-27-17-0640z-1005-mile-tropo-catch
 
jim-satx said:
Congrats, Tomservo. Those are great new GA and FL catches - and so many of them!

It surely was an awesome and unexpected tropo opening. Baton Rouge stations (WFMF, WYNK, WRKF, etc.) were booming in like locals here. At 12:40 a.m. CT, I heard a weak station on 102.5 that didn't match anything in my logs. It turned out to be WHPT "The Bone" in Sarasota, FL. It's my furthest tropo logging by far at 1,005 miles!

https://soundcloud.com/zzzimbob/whpt-on-1025-mhz-1-27-17-0640z-1005-mile-tropo-catch
Click to expand...

Amazing that we both heard that station!
 
Hi guys, those are some great DX catches. Here is what I received from this Gulf Tropo event from Southeastern Louisiana. All these are new stations received via Tropo.

94.5 WFLF Parker FL (333 mi)
106.9 WPLL Cross City FL (485 mi)
104.7 WRBQ Tampa FL (554 mi)
92.9 WIKX Charlotte Harbor FL (603 mi)
92.9 WMFQ Ocala FL (549 mi)
97.5 WPCV Winter Haven FL (594 mi)
100.1 WZJZ Port Charlotte FL (601 mi)
93.9 WMIA Miami Fl (744 mi)
103.1 WIRK Indiantown FL (690 mi)
105.1 WOMX Orlando FL (690 mi)
105.7 WWLL Sebring, FL (623 mi)
98.9 WBZE Tallahassee, Fl (391 mi)
99.3 WEBZ Mexico Beach FL (346 mi)
103.9 WXKB Cape Coral FL (621 mi)
106.3 WUUB Jupiter FL (714 mi)
93.5 WBGF Belle Glade FL (689 mi)

And on HDTV I received these stations.

WFSG-DT-38 Panama City, Fl (345 mi)
WJHG-DT-18 Panama City, Fl (345 mi)
WFSU-DT-32 Tallahassee, Fl (391 mi)
WRXY-DT-33 Tice Fl (613 mi)
WFTX-DT-35 Cape Coral FL (613 mi)
WBFS-DT-32 Miami Fl (722 mi)
WMOR-DT-19 Lakeland FL (561 mi)
 
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I've basically been away from the board for the last few days, but I did get the ATS-505 going on FM the day after tomserevo's OP. The closest I came to any sort of DX here on the gulf at the AL-FL state line was Panama City. Not exactly rare in these parts, particularly if you're 11 stories up! So for me it was "The fish were really biting yesterday, you should've been here", and I missed it!

Pshaw!
 
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