Radio DXing, Tropo, Odd Reception, Weird Weather Effects

[kingborgie]

I was sure I was losing my mind today on my drive home from Swift Current to Ponteix Saskatchewan all of a sudden our local Fm Rock station 94.1 kept switching between "let it be" by the beatles to a Nickleback song then I started changing station and low and behold there was something on EVERY station I had to go to a friends house to show him just to reassure myself that i was in fact Sane. I did pick up the names of a couple including WOZZ in new england WI and Greenbay which is 2,000 KM away, Absolutely wild and exciting.

[stampeder]

Hi kingborgie, I have family in Eastend and Shaunavon.

FM radio skip is very very similar to TV skip, but what you got was a once-in-a-lifetime experience because the Prairies don't get the same sort of tropo effects as Southern Quebec and Southern Ontario do. I hope you will email the engineering staff of those stations to let them know about your amazing FM Radio DX!

[cm023]

FM-DX is regular here in Southern Ontario, its fun and exciting.. A few weeks ago it was Miami & Tampa Bay and then a few days later I had CKEC-FM from New Glasgow, NS among other stations from Boston (The first time ever I have received stations from out east).

[classicsat]

One time; I forget the exact circumstances but it was the early/mid 1990s I recall, I was receiving a couple stations from Texas, in mid/southwestern Ontario. For analog TV,the farthest I got was Toledo (WUAB), for digital TV, the northern tip of lower Michigan, or Detroit.

During my high school days, I rather regularly got Buffalo to most of eastern Michigan on FM, and on occasion Detroit and Toronto.
This was all mostly with a combination of automotive FM tuners and my "goalpost" FM antenna, which was basically a folded dipole with the top elements pointing up at each end (resembling a football goalpost) rather than joined together.

[CamDAB]

This is the King of Skip.

Sporadic-E is the hardest to catch usually because of it's random and instant nature. Wild ranges in signal strength, short lived, but because it comes from a higher inclined angle, those in valleys often do better as reduced signals of nearby cities often are more easily covered up by stations via sporadic-E skip.

ZBM Hamilton Bermuda. circa 1981. Great catch from Dundas, Ontario.
And I got the entire newscast on cassette. :-)

Cameron

[GregS]

Sporadic E-skip, which is what kingborgie experienced, is a different thing than tropo (tropospheric propagation).

In Sporadic E-skip, FM and TV signals reflect off highly-ionized patches in the E Layer of the Earth's ionosphere. You can receive signals from thousands of kilometres away, but they typically fade in and out quickly and are often badly distorted. E-skip happens mostly around the solstices: in May, June, and July, around the summer solstice, and a weaker peak centered on the winter solstice in December.

In tropo, FM and TV signals get trapped between layers of warm and colder air in the lower atmosphere (the troposphere) and can be carried like that for long distances. Tropo typically operates over shorter distances (a few hundred kilometres) but the tend to be stable and may be quite strong, or weak. Tropo is dependent on the weather, and tends to happen more often in warm weather or when there are temperature inversions.

Both happen more often than you'd guess, but most people never notice it because they never tune their FM radios away from the stations they usually listen to. It's only when the signals are so strong that they start to override those local stations that these unusual propagation effects get noticed by most people.

[ralph_sinclair]

I was driving home on Friday May 14th around 5:30 pm and, unsatisfied with CBC 1 and 2, seeked up and picked up "G105 Raleigh" on the stock stereo of a 2003 Honda Civic coupe. Reception was in stereo and came in and out a bit, but was mostly very clear. Then another station came over top of it.

The station broadcasts on 105.1 at 77kw. It's a long way from Raleigh to the North shore of Prince Edward Island...

[CamDAB]

That sounds like a good sporadic-E opening.

Back in '81 I got ZBM from Hamilton, Bermuda, in stereo from Dundas, Ontario. As was the usual practice, I always kept a cassette loaded and recorded a complete newscast.

Sporadic-E tends to come in from a higher angle and being in a low elevation area often is an advantage as distant signals aren't receivable.

Cameron

[james039]

Just picked up X102.3 From West Palm Beach, FL

I am in Ottawa, ON !

[mille]

James 039

today was an E-SKIP day , yep, according to WWW.DXINFOCENTRE.COM....
so normal that you got that radio station so far away
go take a look at the site

[mr weather]

Ah, good old sporadic E. I should have jumped on two meters and tried to work some stations in the Deep South.

[CamDAB]

I was dialing around from the balcony and lots of stuff coming in from far off. Got 100.5 Rochester in HD Radio mode. But that's not the real interesting part...

WTSS, 102.5 "Star 102" from Buffalo must have some severe problems with their analogue. As I tuned them in, all I got was noise, as if the station wasn't there, but wait, the HD light flashed as if it was acquiring an HD stream, and sure enough, WTSS-HD popped out of the noise perfectly. I then re-tuned it several times with 100% repeatability. I thought, hmmmm... Grabbed the Grundig (my current reference) and checked 102.5 (it is a standard FM receiver with an excellent front end, no HD) and the channel was completely clear, just limiter noise. So... now I know that the Insignia NS-HD01 will get HD Radio, even if the main (legacy) transmission (FM mode) isn't working, but the HD is. This also means that it supports an all digital mode of HD Radio...

Very very interesting. Too bad for all those with standard FM radios though.... It covers a huge area.

Guess the techies have their work cut out fixing the analogue FM.... The HD, although overly bright, is working just fine.

Cameron

[stampeder]

I posted this in the TV DXing thread, but it applies to radio too:

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/show...&postcount=408

Are Toronto radio stations out, and if so how is reception of other stations now?

[CamDAB]

I wasn't listening to radio, but did follow that thread as it was developing. :-)

Was involved with other computer related matters and was able to follow things.

From my listening, which started roughly around 8:30pm EDT from the balcony, I didn't notice anything "missing" from Toronto, but the tropo was stunning to the east, and still is great now. I had 3 stations from Rochester in HD, and of course WTSS with it's analogue out of order from Buffalo, but the HD was working perfectly.

Thus, at least the radio supports an all digital mode of HD radio and would fit into the discussion in another thread re: expansion of the FM Band...

Cameron

[cfraser]

Ah, I guess it must have been the power outage that I noticed starting at ~9:40pm. I was listening to a Niagara region station and it went out between leaving the house and getting into the car. I *was* getting a more remote station on the same freq, low level but no static/noise at all, just a different program LOL. The Toronto (AM) stations I tried as substitutes seemed to be normal. The station I was originally listening to has the crappiest equipment setup/reliability I've ever heard in a "professional" op, from mikes to transmitter, not surprised that even the slightest glitch KOs it...