Summer Daytime DX ? 'It's The Most Horrible TIME of the year ...'

[Steve Green NEPA]

Two of the closest-unheard stations back in my Queens NY DX days finally got netted in the summer, almost at the exact midday. They were WJJZ 1460 Mt. Holly NJ and WTTM 920 in Trenton.
Those tries were an attempt to a notion I had. It went something like, that time amd that season was the maximum time to hear annoyingly and unforgivably close stations a shot at coming in on sheer groundwave .... whatever the stations had to send out by, so to speak, default.
Between a 4-foot loop and a Lafayette HA 600-a, a wicked-arse null of local WPAT 930 was arranged. The beautiful music on WPAT's turntables probably shut off and their lights dimmed. I still had to wait for pauses in WGHQ up the Hudson PLUS a weaker WHHJ Providence for a WTTM mention.
Same deal to hear a weak ad for the Burlington County Times off WJJZ. That was a bit easier than the 920 safari, inasmuch as there was just one station to fret over (semi-local WVOX 1460 New Rochelle). But it took another gritty skirmish trying for the right azimuth, along with no one else in the house allowed to move for 5 minutes.

Anyone else here who has spun dial for that purpose at those solstice hours ?

 

[cyberdad]

Anyone else here who has spun dial for that purpose at those solstice hours ?

Sort of.

I like summer DX for the same reason I like AM sunset and sunrise DX. "Thinning of the herd"... as I posted in a recent thread. I still like winter DX better, but summer conditions, at least for me, are a nice alternative that keeps me engaged.

 

[Miss Tuned]

I have to admit that I put my MW DX equipment away for the summer months - at least June through early August. I live at 54 degrees N, so any DX that does arrive comes during hours when I'm long since asleep, and there's no groundwave interest to be had due to a lack of AM in Europe. Fall, on the other hand, is interesting here - there's a period in October/November just after DST ends where sunset here, darkness in China and the operating hours of the TX come together in a way that means CNR1 on 1377 kHz from Xingyang, China (5,200 miles) comes in pretty much reliably once a local low-power co-channel pest is nulled - I normally hear its sign-off just after 18:00 local (which is also UTC). By the time you get into the depths of winter, the channel carries too much slop from Europe/ME and the Chinese station is inaudible.

For overnight DX, as I've gotten older, SDRs have come into their own. I'm so grateful for technology that allows me to leave my computer recording the entire MW band overnight so that I can go in the next day and listen to whatever has come in at 3-4am, especially because it allows you to listen to multiple TOTH IDs on different frequencies that were received at the same time. Far better than being up in the night for an opening when you have work the next morning.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

Dunno if you ever worked in radio, 54 Longitude, but my own sleep often ends with dreams about being at some control board looking for music that's long enough for me to locate when the one song is over .... having to make up news stories with no copy available ..... not knowing what call letters to use ..... having an empty cart rack with no paid commercials in it to play during breaks ..... and then I wake up.
It's disturbingly close to how my actual shows used to sound 28 years ago.

Great DX there ! Sweet dreams, lol!