> True. Storms do the same thing. I was on the air at an FM
> station in Fort Wayne, Indiana once, and got a request line
> call from Brownsville Texas. Not only was he listening loud
> and clear, the signal even lit the FM Stereo pilot light on
> his stereo. FM, AM....get the temps and atmosphere just
> right and radio will travel for miles and miles.
There are two major kinds of FM DX.
- Weather effects cause "tropospheric" propagation. "Tropo" on typical consumer equipment is good for 50-200 miles.
(I have heard 700-mile tropo - Houston - on a car radio - but those were *exceptional* conditions. The current tropo distance record is roughly 3,300 miles. (?!) But that involved a part of the world (between Hawaii and Mexico) where unusual weather formations happen. You won't see a Nashville<=>London path.)
- Science doesn't know what causes "sporadic-E" (or "Es") propagation. Except that it takes place in a much higher layer of the atmosphere.
Es has a typical maximum distance of about 1,500 miles. 1,000-mile Es is quite common. (I had a dialful of Colorado one noon last week)
(Es also has a *minimum* distance! DX less than about 500 miles away almost certainly isn't Es.)
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To be honest it kinda sounds to me like WANT has gotten stronger than it used to be too. But that could just be because I'm paying more attention to the frequency, trying (generally unsuccessfully) to listen to WRFN. Sure wish the FCC would get off their duffs about 3rd adjacent LPFMs & (hopefully) let WRFN move to 103.9 where someone might be able to hear them...