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Great place to DX

C

cla51867

Now no one ever comes to this place to DX, as it is the site of a national tragedy, but I think this could be one of the best places to DX. .As I was driving up the mountain to visit the 911 crash site in Shanksville, PA, I was tuning around my radio and the reception from the altitude is absolutely amazing. The ridge that the plane crashed on is one of the highest points between the east coast and the midwest. Hence, as I was hitting seek on my car radio, I could listen to Cleveland and Youngstown stations, bother of which are between 150 and 200 miles away. Pittsburgh came in clear as a bell (which really isnt a surprise since they are about 80 miles away. At the same time I was listening to my DC stations that I normally listen to at 101.1 and 107.3. Its interesting that at the same spot I can listen to 94.1 out of Canton clear as a bell yet flip to 107.3 and get that really well out of DC. 101.1 was a bit harder to tackle because both WHOT-FM Youngstown and WWDC-Washington were coming in at the same strength.

I would have done some more DXing, but that was not the reason I had visited there.


On another note its always interesting to me that whenever I drive home from Cleveland to DC the Pittsburgh dont just steadily fade away. The Allegheny Front (the first tunnel that the Pennsylvania Turnpike passes through) almosts acts like a wall to radio reception. As you drive in from the west the Pittsburgh Stations are pretty strong up until the tunnel. However when you get to the other side of the tunnel, there is no more signal from Pittsburgh whatsoever and you begin to get frequencies only from the east of the front. The two exceptions to this rule along the turnpike is WINC-FM out of Winchester, VA which you can get all the way to the Donegal exit on the Turpike, and WAYC-FM, which pretty much goes to Somersot, PA.
 
Maybe ghosts reflect signals? I found a peculiar place - a dry line that forms over West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. You get right under it - wherever it is, and it is a PERMANENT E-layer skip! Reliable, dependable. But - the line moves so you have to move to stay under it.
 
Another place to DX is Erie, PA I live in Toronto and go to Erie a few times a year. FM is really good for dxing as I have been able to get Toronto in some parts of Erie. Mostly I can pick up stations from Hamilton, London, Kitchener, Ashtabula OH and Buffalo. AM is also good as some of the Buffalo and Toronto stations come in real well. Erie is 190 miles SW of Toronto.
 
How is it to the south and the southeast into the rest of PA? How is Pittsburgh during the day there?
 
Pittsburgh during the day is not bad, given the amount of ambient electrical interference in a city this size.
I am able to get 570 and 1390 from Youngstown, 640 from Akron, 1100 in Cleveland at almost any time.
For a long time I was also able to get WJR out of Detroit, until a local daytimer moved to 770 about a year back. I can't get WLW in the city proper, but you only have to get about 25 miles outside of town before you can tune it in. I can also sometimes get WFRD 880 out of the Columbus area, and could get WTVN, except 620 from Greensburg, PA walks all over it.
Coverage to the east is not as good, for example, I can't get any of the AM out of Altoona or Johnstown. Can get 560 from Frostburg, MD pretty well though. I used to get some 1K signal on 1370 from somewhere down in southern WV, but can't now that I moved to a different house. (an engineer friend of mine theorizes that it was boucing off of a water tower that
sat atop a nearby hill) In critical hours you can very often get all of the blowtorches out of New York, plus 1210 in Philly.

The previous poster is right about the wall effect once you pass thru Laurel Ridge, it becomes virtually impossible to get
Pittsburgh stations after that. I have a relative who owns property at the 3000 foot level atop the ridge, and for some reason ground wave coverage from Pittsburgh is pretty bad there. I can barely get KDKA there, let alone any of the medium signals.You can get a lot of stuff out of the DC/Baltimore area however.

Erie is an excellent spot. You can often get FM and TV from Toronto, Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit, and AM's from all over.
 
Erie is an excellent spot. You can often get FM and TV from Toronto, Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit, and AM's from all over.
Click to expand...

Until the lake effect snow starts! :p
 
Kevin Lagasse said:
Erie is an excellent spot. You can often get FM and TV from Toronto, Cleveland, Toledo and Detroit, and AM's from all over.
Click to expand...

Until the lake effect snow starts! :p
Click to expand...


....what, you mean it stops? :eek:
 
If you're ever in the central U.S., try the upper floors of some of the buildings at the University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS). The university sits on a steep hill, well above the average terrain. In my college days, I would take my walkman into the top-floor stacks at Watson Library, on the south-facing side. While I studied (yes, I did study from time to time), I could pick up FM stations as far away as Fayetteville, AR and Dodge City, KS, without optimum tropospheric enhancement.

The central U.S. is good for DXing anyway, because you can have e-skip in all directions. Tropospheric DX is limited by consistent weather patterns.
 
How about parts of Pennsylvania beside the poster(s) who found a place to DX in the site of the United 93 crash and in Erie?
 
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