I'd love to ... but nothing much is happening. I pretty much get the same stuff every day, unless e-skip is in, which hasn't happened since the July 5 opening I missed because I was doing other things.
There's been more activity lately in other parts of the country, so maybe we'll have another shot at it before the summer window closes in mid- to late august.
The big problem is the relative rarity of FM
DX here in the Pacific Northwest.
One year from California I counted 32 separate sporadic-E FM openings, although some were quite brief. That would never happen here!From Florida or an area which opens to it, the number every year would exceed that.
The good news is that before our big lull, this has been the best season since I moved here in 2006. (2007 was promising, but daily commitments kept me from experiencing much of it.)
The winter subseason rarely yields much skip, but I recall an early February opening from California and Arizona to Seattle where hams in Los Angeles reported 144mHz contacts to Seattle. I had Seattle FM that evening, but wouldn't you know it? I had to work so I couldn't enjoy it.
So let's hope for at least one more opening like June 29 soon!
Chances decrease markedly after July 31, and dwindle to almost nothing after Aug. 25.
Incidentally, while I'm on this soapbox, when I lived in Bakersfield, about every other year, at the end of July around the 25th to the 29th, we'd have DX which started in Texas, moved to Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas--and they may have had one like that on June 29 when we were rockin' here in Seattle. I'm ready.
One more thing. When TV went HD< our household became a non-TV household. Sad in a way, because TV reception was an early warning of potential FM skip, and with a scanner, I'd often have two or three signals I could separate on the same channel.
Those were the days ...
There's been more activity lately in other parts of the country, so maybe we'll have another shot at it before the summer window closes in mid- to late august.
The big problem is the relative rarity of FM
DX here in the Pacific Northwest.
One year from California I counted 32 separate sporadic-E FM openings, although some were quite brief. That would never happen here!From Florida or an area which opens to it, the number every year would exceed that.
The good news is that before our big lull, this has been the best season since I moved here in 2006. (2007 was promising, but daily commitments kept me from experiencing much of it.)
The winter subseason rarely yields much skip, but I recall an early February opening from California and Arizona to Seattle where hams in Los Angeles reported 144mHz contacts to Seattle. I had Seattle FM that evening, but wouldn't you know it? I had to work so I couldn't enjoy it.
So let's hope for at least one more opening like June 29 soon!
Chances decrease markedly after July 31, and dwindle to almost nothing after Aug. 25.
Incidentally, while I'm on this soapbox, when I lived in Bakersfield, about every other year, at the end of July around the 25th to the 29th, we'd have DX which started in Texas, moved to Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas--and they may have had one like that on June 29 when we were rockin' here in Seattle. I'm ready.
One more thing. When TV went HD< our household became a non-TV household. Sad in a way, because TV reception was an early warning of potential FM skip, and with a scanner, I'd often have two or three signals I could separate on the same channel.
Those were the days ...
