An hour ago, my brother, in Bristol, CT
received KHKN, 94.9, Little Rock, AR on
his car radio.
The distance between my brother's FM receiver
An hour ago, my brother, in Bristol, CT
received KHKN, 94.9, Little Rock, AR on
his car radio.
The distance between my brother's FM receiver
in the car and the KHKN transmitter is 1157 miles,
which is a typical distance for this kind of "skip"
on the FM BCB, otherwise known as Sporadic E.
He said the station sounded like it was next door!
After looking up the station's specs, I'm not
surprised. KHKN on 94.9 MHz is 96,000 watts at
1844 feet above average terrain.
I love chasing E-skip, but I never seem to have
the time to do it.
Bruce, DRS2
The only E Skip for me was way back in about 1958, when I had a Zenith table radio with FM "The Armstrong Method" from the Goodwill Store.
St. Louis had one FM station at night, KCFM at 93.7 mHz, 24,700 Watts.
During the day was KFUO-FM, 6,700 Watts on 99.1 and on school days the public schools had KSLH, 12,500 Watts, 91.5 mHz. The school station signed off for lunch, off after school, off all weekend.
But one (summer?) night I got an FM from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, way down south, coming in as if it was local. Never got it again.
This can be fun on the ham 2 meter band. I recall years back working a repeater in Asheville, NC from my front yard in Cincinnati using a 2.5 watt hand-held with a rubber duck antenna! It was interesting to key down and hear multiple repeaters "kerchunk".
Seems the summer weather patterns can cause an effect called "ducting" where the VHF signals get trapped between layers of conductive air and bounce their way from here to there.
Neil
Carl,
By any chance was that station in Poplar Bluff, Mo KJEZ 95.9 I have dx'ed that station before too as well as 88.1 FM KDHX. Both stations wiped out local stations that day and i was able to call into the public station KDHX to brag on their strong signal, even got mentioned on the show.
http://radio-locator.com/info/KJEZ-FM
KJEZ sent me some bumper stickers too.
The biggest skip of all is M-Skip, meaning "memory skip."
I am not sure if I got the call letters of the station in Poplar Bluff, but I probably did because I remember "Poplar Bluff," and they wouldn't have said that without the call letters.
Last night I looked at all the call letters for Poplar Bluff as listed on Radio-locator.com, and none of them look familiar, so I'm thinking that the station I heard A.) changed its call letters, or, B) went out of business.
But I am pretty sure it was near the center of the dial so 95.9 might be right.
This morning at 8:52 I spontaneously decided to cross the FM dial starting at 87.5 and look for signs of E-skip or unusual activity.
The C.Crane Radio Plus is right here alongside the keyboard.
Being down in a topographic bowl, surrounded by uphill on all sides, I do not hear all the low and mid power non-commercial stations on the low end, but was very surprised by finding KDX-FM at 90.1 mHz.
KDX-FM is a WholeHouse 2.0 at 107.1 mHz 1-foot from the C.Crane on the bamboo tower.
So I went 20-feet over to the desk and found that 90.1 is blank on the Sangean, no trace of a station.
All across the entire FM dial on the C.Crane the power meter stayed full on, 10 notches, even when only noise was being heard.
The only question remaining was a station at 104.9, as I don't recall any local station on 104.9, but it turned out to be KMJM, 7.8kHz over in Columbia, Illinois.
The dead carrier at 101.9 is my editing frequency from the C.Crane FM Transmitter up on the computer, the frequency where I edit The Low Power Hour. I think it should have its own call letters, so I'm naming it KEGO - "Ego, the Station Where I Listen To Myself".
Only E-Skip I have ever caught was when I was listening to my own station, only to have it ovverun (with perfect timing by the way, the song just ended) with an ID that said "Super Hits Of Rock and Roll 99.9 The Wave" I was fooled and thought I got a new ID. (Slogan of mine was and still is Super Hits)
interesting to catch one of the FEW classic hitters on 99.9 while listening to mine.