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Holy Trippin' Tropo Batman!!! The Edge DX'd in Willcox

T

The Beave

Guest
Hey folks,

It's been about a week since leaving AZ for a job in the upper Midwest. One thing of note.. I was able to pick up Phoenix's "The Edge" all the way to Willcox.

It was rather interesting since most 100kw stations clear about 100-120 mi. w/o dropping out.

Color me impressed... :eek: Anybody had similar? It must have been the night for tropo.
 
The Edge's transmitter is located about 7 miles east of downtown Queen Creek..Their tower is a little over 600 feet tall on flat farmland... Not a great location, but the best they can do for a move-in from Coolidge. Still, not a bad accomplishment. They just wish they could put a better signal into the West and North Valley...

A few years ago, I went to Tucson from Mesa, and loved listening to Mega 106.3. Someplace after turning off highway 79 west of Oracle headed into Tucson, all of a sudden Mega got blasted by 106.3 in Sun City (when it was still The Edge)... That was more than 100 miles for a Class A, even though it didn't last long... Sounds like the lay of the land helped bring 103.9 to Willcox for ya! Seriously doubt it was tropo...
 
Mark Andrews said:
Someplace after turning off highway 79 west of Oracle headed into Tucson, all of a sudden Mega got blasted by 106.3 in Sun City (when it was still The Edge)... That was more than 100 miles for a Class A, even though it didn't last long...
Click to expand...
106.3, Sun City is a Class C2, not a Class A. (They run 23 kW from 221 metres AAT/1098 metres ASL.)
 
I may be wrong, but this happened over ten years ago, and I think they were still at 6kw at the time.

The phenomenon is not unheard of...When I lived in Oregon, my home was on a higher ridge, about 400 ft elevation south of Portland. I picked up a 3kw Class A licensed to Toledo on the Central Oregon coast, with a stick at 300 feet, and the signal climbing up over a 1200 foot mountain range right next to them between me and them. That's a distance of at least 90 air miles...and I heard them on a regular basis! That was almost 20 years ago...

Sadly, with today's FM band packed with more stations, translators and interference, it's harder to pull in a distant find like these...but that doesn't stop us from trying once in awhile, does it? :)

Just last night, I heard somebody up in Oregon DXed 96.9 in Phoenix, along with several other FM signals from...Nebraska and South Dakota??? Now THAT'S what I call tropo... Fun stuff!
 
Mark Andrews said:
Just last night, I heard somebody up in Oregon DXed 96.9 in Phoenix, along with several other FM signals from...Nebraska and South Dakota??? Now THAT'S what I call tropo... Fun stuff!
Click to expand...
That was almost definitely E-skip. Tropo generally does not deliver a station more than 500 miles away.
 
last wed, I picked up a Rapid City, SD station in the southern panhandle of Neb. 93.1 KRCS-FM it carried also to as far east as Mitchell, SD... A few stations were kicking with Storms near the area.
 
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