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Eclipse thoughts?

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Mainly listened to a couple of the very few hams on 20 Meters, one of which was CQing the "solar event". Nothing unusual on HF, and the MW was out of the question, as the closest area affected would be 2K miles away or so.
 
I am in Chicago where the sun was about 95 percent covered at peak. I got in my car after the peak when it was maybe 75 percent covered and tried the AM band. The only thing I noticed was that on the higher end there was that blend of weak signals in the background you hear at night but not during the daytime. It faded pretty quickly though. Maybe I would have had better luck closer to the peak but I was more interested in observing the eclipse at the time.
 
boombox4 said:
Mainly listened to a couple of the very few hams on 20 Meters, one of which was CQing the "solar event". Nothing unusual on HF, and the MW was out of the question, as the closest area affected would be 2K miles away or so.
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I'd have tried 80 meters instead. Twenty is always open during the day, and it would be difficult to determine whether you were hearing anything unusual in the short time that eclipse-influenced propagation would be possible. Signals quickly fading in, then fading back out, in daylight would stand out on 80, which can be pretty dead between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. this time of year.
 
I just finished downloading that 65GB file from Bob Hawkins (Edinburgh IN).

Turns out the 1410 is not New Jersey. It's WKKP McDonough, GA, identifying their translator W265DG on 100.9. 2.5KW 420mi.
Found KKGM-1630 in the recording too; WNVR-1030 in Oak Lawn IL with Polish programming; WMLB-1690 faded up at S9+15 over WVON at the TOH ID, KRZI-1660 (825 miles!!) lots more to check.
 
CTListener said:
I'd have tried 80 meters instead. Twenty is always open during the day, and it would be difficult to determine whether you were hearing anything unusual in the short time that eclipse-influenced propagation would be possible. Signals quickly fading in, then fading back out, in daylight would stand out on 80, which can be pretty dead between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. this time of year.
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Being that the 31 meter band (a night time band) was mostly MIA, and 30 Meters was MIA completely, I decided not to tune lower down to 40 or 80. 80 is fairly spare in this region anyway, even at night, it's nothing like it was in the 2000s. 40 is somewhere in between, but during the day it's generally one or two Canadian noontime nets. 80 has never been a long haul band here since 2002 -- when sometimes I could just barely hear extremely weak signals from Oz.

I decided to tune 20 to hear what the hams were saying about it. Around here the cloud cover was so thick that there was no way to see any evidence of an eclipse. A far cry from the last one in 2017.
 
MichaelTheZ said:
I am in Chicago where the sun was about 95 percent covered at peak. I got in my car after the peak when it was maybe 75 percent covered and tried the AM band. The only thing I noticed was that on the higher end there was that blend of weak signals in the background you hear at night but not during the daytime. It faded pretty quickly though. Maybe I would have had better luck closer to the peak but I was more interested in observing the eclipse at the time.
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As you should be.

Kudos to you. The eclipse is an astronomical wonder and so rare that it should be observed,

Not scurrying to your car or bunker so you may hear a radio station that you can get at night anyways, .... "BUT TODAY I GOT IT AT 3 PM!!! GUFFAWWWW!!!!"
 
30 minutes when?... the night before, the morning of? - i can see that being well prepared

hopefully not when there was 50 or more percent of coverage.
I like the idea of recording these SDR's and other things for later consumption.
 
Another wonder of the airwaves in the Bob Hawkins' files (Edinburgh IN).
WCAZ-1510 Carthage IL. 330 watts, at 1505 ET, Weatherology WX and WCAZ calls, 99.1 FM easily heard u/ WLAC. 2 minutes before totality. May have been 'only' 284 miles, but this is a very low power station even for a daytimer. Also WTPR-710 Paris TN, only 750 watts at 247 miles. Finding a Southern Gospel station and a sports station swapping on 1560. Assuming WKDO KY and probably WMBH Joplin?
Good thing the SDR recorded everything. Will AM radio exist for the 2045 eclipse? Doubtful. But by then I will be pushing 50 years old, probably viewing the eclipse with my whole family somewhere along the path. Probably UT or CO.
 
billmich said:
30 minutes when?... the night before, the morning of? - i can see that being well prepared

hopefully not when there was 50 or more percent of coverage.
I like the idea of recording these SDR's and other things for later consumption.
Click to expand...
Morning of. Had my laptop outside with SDR running, both my Ccranes tuned to target stations at full volume, and glasses on the whole time until totality, when I swapped them for binoculars for 3 minutes. The beautiful sights and sounds of a solar eclipse. :)
 
crainbebo said:
Another wonder of the airwaves in the Bob Hawkins' files (Edinburgh IN).
WCAZ-1510 Carthage IL. 330 watts, at 1505 ET, Weatherology WX and WCAZ calls, 99.1 FM easily heard u/ WLAC. 2 minutes before totality. May have been 'only' 284 miles, but this is a very low power station even for a daytimer. Also WTPR-710 Paris TN, only 750 watts at 247 miles. Finding a Southern Gospel station and a sports station swapping on 1560. Assuming WKDO KY and probably WMBH Joplin?
Good thing the SDR recorded everything. Will AM radio exist for the 2045 eclipse? Doubtful. But by then I will be pushing 50 years old, probably viewing the eclipse with my whole family somewhere along the path. Probably UT or CO.
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Apparently the 2045 eclipse will also pass where I watched this one, but I'll be 88, so if I'm still above ground I likely won't be traveling. Got to wait for my new computer to download the files from the SDR
 
If anyone can provide a safe link that can handle large (multi-gig) files, I will be happy to try to upload my SDR IQ files from the eclipse--from Springfield, OH. Most of the action seems to have happened at or after totality.

It will likely be some time before I can get to everything for personal listening, life is quite busy right now...
 
crainbebo said:
Another wonder of the airwaves in the Bob Hawkins' files (Edinburgh IN).
WCAZ-1510 Carthage IL. 330 watts, at 1505 ET, Weatherology WX and WCAZ calls, 99.1 FM easily heard u/ WLAC. 2 minutes before totality. May have been 'only' 284 miles, but this is a very low power station even for a daytimer. Also WTPR-710 Paris TN, only 750 watts at 247 miles. Finding a Southern Gospel station and a sports station swapping on 1560. Assuming WKDO KY and probably WMBH Joplin?
Good thing the SDR recorded everything. Will AM radio exist for the 2045 eclipse? Doubtful. But by then I will be pushing 50 years old, probably viewing the eclipse with my whole family somewhere along the path. Probably UT or CO.
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That's impressive! I didn't log anything lower than 4.7 kW. Seems I was limited to the high power stuff.
 
billmich said:
As you should be.

Kudos to you. The eclipse is an astronomical wonder and so rare that it should be observed,

Not scurrying to your car or bunker so you may hear a radio station that you can get at night anyways, .... "BUT TODAY I GOT IT AT 3 PM!!! GUFFAWWWW!!!!"
Click to expand...
You can do both. I did so in 2017. Observed the eclipse (using the two paper plate method, as it was only partial here), and then after doing that for a few minutes, and taking some pics of the image on the plate, I went up and DXed. The DX effects last longer than the visual totality.
 
crainbebo said:
Checking my recordings again and may have a tentative on 1410. It sure sounds like "...TG 100.7 (or 100.9) FM and 1410 AM" at 1500 ET, a few minutes before totality. Perhaps this could be 500 watt WHTG Eatonville, NJ. That would be one heck of a catch at 635 miles from the Edinburgh IN KiwiSDR. An UNID Country station mixed with them (with Rodney Atkins). Maybe KTCS in Arkansas.
Also slow hymns on 1060, shortly after Benton Harbor MI faded. Tentative on WILB Canton OH.
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I am Just no checking back in here. After seeing this post I went back and checked my music log history for 4/8. I t shows that Rodney Adkins "Take A Back Road" was actually playing on KTCS FM (which is simulcast on KTCS AM 1410)during the actual totality. This is a
 
I thought the other one was Arkansas. Thanks! By the time the song ended, it was gone. The UNID above KTCS was WKKP in McDonough GA. 2.5KW, with a 100.9 translator.
 
TOON040824.jpg
 
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