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FM Double-hop Es

Ditto on the 88.9...wowzers!

I have DXed FM/TV for well over 30 years, but never ever had a double hop---ID'd anyway.

Last year I caught a Canadian TV station on ch 2 from my home in south Florida....there was a commercial for an optical chain, and locations in Winnipeg were shown on screen. However, as the chain is national, I cannot log it for sure as CKND2 in Minnedosa. (This would sure be double hop.) Global Winnipeg e-mailed me but would not confirm, and the optical place never wrote me back. So I am still on the hunt.

cd
 
ddsparxx said:
The most distant FM station I logged is KNNK 100.5 in Dimmit, TX, at 1420 miles in northern VA, however, it may be just be single-hop Es.
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Best way to know for sure is to check your logs from that day if you have them. If you were hearing other Texas stations during this same opening, chances are you had very long single-hop Es. If you were getting stations from the 500-700 mile range and then this 1400 mile station fell into your lap, it was probably 2x Es.

crainbebo said:
Farthest logged: a translator on 88.9 (K205CW/KJIL) from Follett, TX (226w at 1367 mi!!), and KATP 101.9 Amarillo, TX caught 7/13/09 at 1360 miles.
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I logged a translator (93.5 K228EE) from Elkhart, KS vis Es in 2009. The distance was 957 miles. What would be REALLY awesome would be a translator via double-hop!
 
Back around 1968, I sent a report to CBHT Halifax, NS and they sent a letter back but refused to verify my reception. I didn't have a lot of money to be spending on letters (I had even sent them International Reply Coupons), so it was at that point that I just taped and logged my DX, and stopped sending for QSL cards. I have a handful of QSLs, but after that problem with the CBC, I just said that was enough. I know what I saw and heard, and that's enough. Nice job, CBHT and CBC. You see it's been over thirty years and I haven't forgotten your lack of encouragement of my hobby. I still have your letter.
 
vibe said:
I'm not one to hand out too much praise but a light bulb power translator (226w) at that distance? Not double hop but a remarkable catch Crain. Happy Easter to everyone one the board!
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Radio Bill who occasionally posts on RI logged a 10 watt high school station from South Dakota in Cincinnati around 1970 on Es. And I logged a 10 watt college station from near Cleveland in Cincinnati at about 240 air miles, but that was tropo. Back then, 10 watt stations were common but the FM dial was far less packed with stations and many of those stations went off the air at 11PM or midnight. It was a great time to be a DXer...
 
Now that I think of it, wasn't it somebody on this board who got a double hop FM Es in Oregon from Washington DC?

I also remember listening to the audio too.

I'm almost certain it was this board but I could be mistaken.
 
I'm not following some of this. Forgive the rustiness; plus, I've only FM and TV DXed infrequently. I've never looked or monitored all that much, merely encountering such tropo and E-skip times through random listening.

1062 miles (FM) would be what, then? Standard one-skip DX?

What would 1212 miles (TV) be?

Am a bit confused with the ranges. Can someone list a general range for tropo, E-skip and 2X E-skip?

(I also used the 'How Far Is It' site for distances. They have a provision for the latitude and longitude, but I entered only the cities)
 
1062 miles is typical for E skip.

1212 miles is also one hop E skip.

Up to 1500 miles can still be one hop, however that gets tough to confirm if it's one hop or possibly two because single hops can be as low as 500 miles but that's as rare as 1500 miles.

Over 1500 miles should be double hop.


Tropo can be over 2000 miles but typical tropo is mostly less than 1000 miles with the usual being 200 to 500 miles or so.

I've gotten tropo catches at 600 miles and 930 miles across the Gulf.
 
Living in Kansas, double hop e-skip is largely impossible, since we can, in theory, log each coast on a single hop. I suppose I would have to hope for a double hop into the Caribbean or Central America, or far northern Canada.

I think the double-hop guy in Washington, D.C. is named David. If I'm thinking of the same person, he logged KAKE (channel 10) from Wichita, in D.C., in an unusually intense and high MUF e-skip event a few years ago.
 
not the DC David, a Dave living in Central OR. Caught pretty much every big station from the SW and Midwest, as well as 2x from IL, IN, MI, etc, as well as the WKYS 93.9 log from DC.

-crainbebo
 
crainbebo said:
not the DC David, a Dave living in Central OR. Caught pretty much every big station from the SW and Midwest, as well as 2x from IL, IN, MI, etc, as well as the WKYS 93.9 log from DC.

-crainbebo
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I remember that. He got Chicago's WMBI (90.1) through double-hop. I was at work that day and probably could have taken advantage of some pretty epic Es.
 
In the 70's I heard ZBM-FM 89.1 from Hamilton, Bermuda in Morton Grove, IL - 1,430 miles. That signal was staying in quite steady with a few deep fades for, say 10-15 seconds every few minutes for probably up to 10-15 minutes total as I recall then...who knows how long it was already coming in at my location when I started hearing ZBM ("Zed-B-M") ...I saw somewhere recently that ZBM-FM was operating at 15kW ERP though I have no idea what power they were using then in the mid-70's (roughly '76). Now only if I would fix the belt in my reel-to-reel recorder to play those FM DX tapes again!!!

It's fairly common knowledge that FM radio stations on islands usually don't have tall towers, since most of the time they are nearly at sea level and there is little to no terrain to interfere with signal reach, unless whatever island the station is on has mountainous terrain, then a tower or tower stub would be placed on a mountain...my understanding is that the height of the transmitting antenna is not very critical for Es to occur, but the beam width of the signal lobes would need to hit the ionosphere at a favorable angle obviously for the signal to bounce back down...I'm no propagation expert, for sure, just a theory... I have a 1971 World Radio TV Handbook, no TPO or ERP given for ZBM-FM. (this is the furthest east I have heard. Stateside, I have heard Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore and Northern NJ WRSU 88.7 - Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ - but not New York City - why? Well, most of their channels are on the same frequencies as Chicago's metro area "Class B" signals are!)

Within the past 2 years I heard KVOD 88.1 Lakewood, CO 896 miles from Prairie Grove, IL (while driving in a rainstorm, they are at 1.2kW ERP (this is the furthest west I have heard) In the 70's I heard 97.3 and 101.5 from Miami also in Morton Grove, IL... approximately 1,202 miles. Heard KUT-FM 90.5 Austin, TX (1,225 miles), so that would be the most SW catch from the Crystal Lake, IL area.

Going north, WHSA Brule, WI - 339 miles (almost Duluth, but never Duluth...and I don't believe I have ever caught any Twin Cities stations...maybe KEEY 102.1...not sure)... at 339 miles WHSA would likely be Tropo...probably quite unlikely to be getting Single or Double Hop Es from the North "quadrant", say a bearing of 315° to 45° Since most of the Canadian high power stations are in the southern parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia etc., that would be really tough to get single hop Es from way up north in Canada in Northern IL...
 
stormy01 said:
In the 70's I heard ZBM-FM 89.1 from Hamilton, Bermuda in Morton Grove, IL - 1,430 miles. That signal was staying in quite steady with a few deep fades for, say 10-15 seconds every few minutes for probably up to 10-15 minutes total as I recall then...who knows how long it was already coming in at my location when I started hearing ZBM ("Zed-B-M") ...I saw somewhere recently that ZBM-FM was operating at 15kW ERP though I have no idea what power they were using then in the mid-70's (roughly '76). Now only if I would fix the belt in my reel-to-reel recorder to play those FM DX tapes again!!!

It's fairly common knowledge that FM radio stations on islands usually don't have tall towers, since most of the time they are nearly at sea level and there is little to no terrain to interfere with signal reach, unless whatever island the station is on has mountainous terrain, then a tower or tower stub would be placed on a mountain...my understanding is that the height of the transmitting antenna is not very critical for Es to occur, but the beam width of the signal lobes would need to hit the ionosphere at a favorable angle obviously for the signal to bounce back down...I'm no propagation expert, for sure, just a theory... I have a 1971 World Radio TV Handbook, no TPO or ERP given for ZBM-FM. (this is the furthest east I have heard. Stateside, I have heard Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore and Northern NJ WRSU 88.7 - Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ - but not New York City - why? Well, most of their channels are on the same frequencies as Chicago's metro area "Class B" signals are!)

Within the past 2 years I heard KVOD 88.1 Lakewood, CO 896 miles from Prairie Grove, IL (while driving in a rainstorm, they are at 1.2kW ERP (this is the furthest west I have heard) In the 70's I heard 97.3 and 101.5 from Miami also in Morton Grove, IL... approximately 1,202 miles. Heard KUT-FM 90.5 Austin, TX (1,225 miles), so that would be the most SW catch from the Crystal Lake, IL area.

Going north, WHSA Brule, WI - 339 miles (almost Duluth, but never Duluth...and I don't believe I have ever caught any Twin Cities stations...maybe KEEY 102.1...not sure)... at 339 miles WHSA would likely be Tropo...probably quite unlikely to be getting Single or Double Hop Es from the North "quadrant", say a bearing of 315° to 45° Since most of the Canadian high power stations are in the southern parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia etc., that would be really tough to get single hop Es from way up north in Canada in Northern IL...
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The New York City stations broadcast from the Empire State Building, with only 6000 watts. I'm impressed you got WRSU all the way in Illinois which is only 1300 watts from a short tower and its signal craps out after 15 miles.
 
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