Lake Enhanced Tropo

[Andrew K]

This evening as I was driving from Elyria to Cleveland on I-90, I was listening to 102.5 WTSS Buffalo the whole drive. It was coming in just as if it was local... nothing else was even interfering with it, RDS display and everything. How common is that? I'm in Akron now, and the FM dial is normal, no anomalies.

I also picked up 94.5 WNED too.

 

[Buckeyes2001]

That is quite common near the lake to get tropo like that from other areas along the shore and across the lake in Canada where it is flat. Land ridges immediately south of the lakeshore usually prevent that kind of propagation from going very far inland but once in a while it does. I can tune into 102.5 here in Vermilion and hear WTSS just about any day though its usually mixing with WIOG. Strangely WZOO seems to be absent which you'd think would be more common especially near the shore. WDVE makes occasional appearances here too and I've ever heard Air 1 from Akron out here. This all on an Alpine car radio.

 

[brontos1]

Agreed! I live high on the hill in Parma and consistently receive stations from Windsor, Chatham, London and Kitchener (Ontario), as well as Detroit, Toledo Youngstown and Mansfield. This is in summer and winter with an attic mounted channelmaster yagi. WTSS is a powerful station south of Buffalo allowing it to shoot across the lake and I too receive it here occasionally. With the weather patterns we've had it is not surprising you caught it the other night especially that close to the lake.

 

[schmave]

I listened to 98.1 (Free FM/classic rock) from London, Ontario quite a bit last weekend during a visit to Conneaut. It was pretty consistent, although weaker on Sunday with much warmer temperatures than on Friday and Saturday. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, given that How Far Is It? says the straight-line distance is only 82 miles and 98.1 goes with 100K watts, but still, very solid signal.

 

[HHH]

Here's a great tropo forecast map, which will show you conditions over the next few days:

http://www.dxinfocentre.com/tropo.html

select "Eastern North America" on the pulldown.

 

[SonoSational18]

I pick up WTSS with some regularity. Doesn't hurt that it's grandfathered with more than 10x the power of a statutory class B... 110kw @ 1150 ft. (Current regs would limit a class B to 8.6kw at that height.). WNED is also grandfathered with 94kw @ about 750 ft.

 

[Andrew K]

I pick up WTSS with some regularity. Doesn't hurt that it's grandfathered with more than 10x the power of a statutory class B... 110kw @ 1150 ft. (Current regs would limit a class B to 8.6kw at that height.). WNED is also grandfathered with 94kw @ about 750 ft.

Yes, it seems like the commonly received lake enhanced tropo radio stations are mostly high powered... I know Canada has a few stations that are allowed higher power levels like 93.9 CKLW is at 100,000 watts, and CBCL 93.5 is listed at 100,000 watts too. CFPL 95.9 seems to be very high at 380,000 watts!! If that's even correct.