Help! Tropo Is Killing Us!

[nd2023]

Question for the O.P.:
Is your signal just becoming weaker than normal, or is it being overpowered by another station coming in through the duct?
That would indicate whether it's power is being sucked in to a duct, or is being overridden. And, it might indicate if the signal (from a high point on your tower) is being blocked from the ground-based listeners, possibly by that "enhancement layer".

kenglish, we have experienced both -- the most common one is when there is "white noise" background static and a very limited signal range (regular listeners call us to say they can't hear us)...other times, a 100 kw co-channel station 250 miles to our south and another c1 about 200 miles to our west take turns booming into our coverage area depending on conditions.

As I said earlier, our antenna is at 450 feet haat, 5kw TPO, 13kw ERP, so we get slaughtered at times by the co-channel 100kw stations that are just a few hundred miles away.

The idea of having an aux antenna lower on the tower sounds like a good possibility, but being in a fairly small market, not sure we could afford to do that anytime soon. Maybe I should try to find an AM translator

If the duct is below 450 feet, like most ducts, then it'll refract your radio waves towards the sky, and eventually back down to the ground well outside your coverage area. That'll be heard as a weaker signal locally. If the duct is long enough to reach a co-channel station, that station will be heard in your coverage area. The higher the temperature difference, the stronger the duct, and the distant stations will be stronger. I've noticed some of the best tropo openings are on the nights after a 95+ degree day with a cold front coming the next day. In fact, we just had a 700 mile duct last week stretching from Boston to North Carolina.

 

[TomZ]

Today at 6:00 AM I heard KTOW's legal ID on a motel radio in Guymon, Oklahoma. They mentioned two California cities.

I didn't try to remember them; which is too bad because radio-locator doesn't know KTOW. ???

 

[littlejohn]

Being in a motel in Guymon is bad enough in itself. Stopped there for gas once (lived in Tulsa) and the consultant with me looks around and sez "This ain't the end of the world. But you can see it from here!"

 

[TomZ]

Being in a motel in Guymon is bad enough in itself. Stopped there for gas once (lived in Tulsa) and the consultant with me looks around and sez "This ain't the end of the world. But you can see it from here!"

You relied on a consult for such observations ;D

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

Yes! That's just about at the end of the earth where ya drop off isn't it? I can't imagine wanting to live there.

 

[tomservo]

It must really be a pain for anyone depending on a translator on the coast. It's probably really easy to override a 10 or 99 watt signal.

I lived in a small Mississippi town at one time and enhancement would often inflict pain on the translator's input. It was picking up a class A from about 40 miles east but every morning it was overrode by the class C sports station 250 miles east. And when tropo really kicked up, it would pick up all kinds of nonsense. Apparently they never installed the necessary equipment to kill the translator when the parent station disappeared.