I know there is a technical term for it. But the reception has been great for stations outside of the Providence area.
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Heat,Humidity, & Great Reception
- Thread starter Power Of Radio
- Start date
M
mayermike
Guest
I believe the humidity allows signals to travel further than usual. If you listen to 104.1 WBCN from Fall River to Providence(I know it is a Boston station), you will hear Power 104 from Connecticut sometimes cutting in.
F
FRACK100
Guest
I listen to KFI online. Leo Laporte's Tech Guy is my favorite, but the Jesus Christ Show is strangely compelling. "I am your Holy Host."
Skynet74 said:Yeah that's always been kind of fun. But not quite as exciting these days when I'm able to pull up the Live feed from CBS FM New York or KFI Los Angeles with the click of a mouse. I used to dream of the sort of thing that the internet has now made a reality.
mayermike said:I believe the humidity allows signals to travel further than usual. If you listen to 104.1 WBCN from Fall River to Providence(I know it is a Boston station), you will hear Power 104 from Connecticut sometimes cutting in.
Back about 1992-1993....we had a stretch of high humidity and almost 100 degree temps for like a week...one day, Giovanni was getting bombarded with calls from eastern Long Island and NYC itself from Howard Stern fans telling him to "turn the signal" because Pro-FM was overriding K-Rock. It was then even mentioned by Howard himself on air as they started calling K-Rock to complain and Howard went on a memorable rant against Mike Butts (who had just gone off the air)....comical as Chris Tyler, Davey Morris, Tony Mascaro & I were trying to get in touch with somebody at PLJ to see if we could listen in to what Howard was saying as BCN still had Charles L on the mornings at that point...Good times, good times...sigh
SKIP and TROPS (was Re: Heat,Humidity, & Great Reception)
Usually about this time of the year, stations from outside of a given market can come in to almost local quality. There are two ways this happens. One is a term called tropospheric bending (or simply "trops"). Generally this happens during periods of hot, humid weather. After nightfall, the radiation cooling occurs causing a temperature inversion. The hot air from the day rises up to a level of about 2 to 3 miles. This level of warmer air acts like a mirror and can extend the normal coverage of an FM station many times over. I've actually picked up stations on trops from over 800 miles. It's not skip. You can tell the difference as trops don't have that rapid fading, so coming during skip conditions.
Skips (sporadic e-layer propagation) on the other hand occur very sporadically, especially during the months of May through late July and again during around the winter solstice (about December 21). But E-skip can occur almost any time of the year, but the months I have just mentioned are the more common. Skip can bring in stations from about 650-1500 miles away. I've picked up FM stations in 36 states and 4 Canadian Provinces. If there is skip occurring on FM, chances are you will be able to watch some long distance TV on the low VHF channels (2-6). Around the Providence area, Channel 3 would be your best bet (that is until 2/17/09 when analog ceases to exist, but that's another topic for another time). I've gotten some crystal clear color pictures from TV stations all around the east coast and in the midwest. Got some nice reception reports and replies from many of these stations over the years.
So, there's the "Reader's Digest" version of long-distance reception. Even though most of these stations are available via the internet, I still get a charge on getting DX (long-distance) reception the old way, over the air! 73.
-Peter Q. George (K1XRB)
Whitman, Massachusetts
Power Of Radio said:I know there is a technical term for it. But the reception has been great for stations outside of the Providence area.
Usually about this time of the year, stations from outside of a given market can come in to almost local quality. There are two ways this happens. One is a term called tropospheric bending (or simply "trops"). Generally this happens during periods of hot, humid weather. After nightfall, the radiation cooling occurs causing a temperature inversion. The hot air from the day rises up to a level of about 2 to 3 miles. This level of warmer air acts like a mirror and can extend the normal coverage of an FM station many times over. I've actually picked up stations on trops from over 800 miles. It's not skip. You can tell the difference as trops don't have that rapid fading, so coming during skip conditions.
Skips (sporadic e-layer propagation) on the other hand occur very sporadically, especially during the months of May through late July and again during around the winter solstice (about December 21). But E-skip can occur almost any time of the year, but the months I have just mentioned are the more common. Skip can bring in stations from about 650-1500 miles away. I've picked up FM stations in 36 states and 4 Canadian Provinces. If there is skip occurring on FM, chances are you will be able to watch some long distance TV on the low VHF channels (2-6). Around the Providence area, Channel 3 would be your best bet (that is until 2/17/09 when analog ceases to exist, but that's another topic for another time). I've gotten some crystal clear color pictures from TV stations all around the east coast and in the midwest. Got some nice reception reports and replies from many of these stations over the years.
So, there's the "Reader's Digest" version of long-distance reception. Even though most of these stations are available via the internet, I still get a charge on getting DX (long-distance) reception the old way, over the air! 73.
-Peter Q. George (K1XRB)
Whitman, Massachusetts
N
Nizam
Guest
I used to hear it all the time, in fact the first time I heard it, I panicked, because it was right after FNX went off the air and I thought we were losing another rock station.mayermike said:I believe the humidity allows signals to travel further than usual. If you listen to 104.1 WBCN from Fall River to Providence(I know it is a Boston station), you will hear Power 104 from Connecticut sometimes cutting in.
Back about 1992-1993....we had a stretch of high humidity and almost 100 degree temps for like a week...one day, Giovanni was getting bombarded with calls from eastern Long Island and NYC itself from Howard Stern fans telling him to "turn the signal" because Pro-FM was overriding K-Rock. It was then even mentioned by Howard himself on air as they started calling K-Rock to complain and Howard went on a memorable rant against Mike Butts (who had just gone off the air)....comical as Chris Tyler, Davey Morris, Tony Mascaro & I were trying to get in touch with somebody at PLJ to see if we could listen in to what Howard was saying as BCN still had Charles L on the mornings at that point...Good times, good times...sigh
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Pro-FM was overriding K-Rock. To funny. I grew up wishing that K-Rock would override Pro-FM...lol. Not that Pro-FM was a bad station or anything. But I was such a big Howard Stern fan growing up that I had daily fantasies that I could somehow figure out how to override Pro-FM and pick up K-Rock with some kind of giant Outdoor antenna. As far as other signals that skip go, back in 1994 I remember picking up signals from Florida while in East Providence. There was a two hour window one afternoon where I picked up all kinds of signals from Tampa and Orlando. That was WILD!
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Pro-FM was overriding K-Rock. To funny. I grew up wishing that K-Rock would override Pro-FM...lol. Not that Pro-FM was a bad station or anything. But I was such a big Howard Stern fan growing up that I had daily fantasies that I could somehow figure out how to override Pro-FM and pick up K-Rock with some kind of giant Outdoor antenna. As far as other signals that skip go, back in 1994 I remember picking up signals from Florida while in East Providence. There was a two hour window one afternoon where I picked up all kinds of signals from Tampa and Orlando. That was WILD!
Skynet74 said:As far as other signals that skip go, back in 1994 I remember picking up signals from Florida while in East Providence. There was a two hour window one afternoon where I picked up all kinds of signals from Tampa and Orlando. That was WILD! [/b]
That's nothing too unusual, it's E Skip, and we've had several good openings to FL this summer, in fact, about a half hour ago I heard 97.9 WXTB from the Tampa area in the car.
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