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28.3.17 0611
The 7 - Random - Some pretty wild FM reception Register and log in to post!
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Eddie Famous
Andouille
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#1 Posted on 9.7.09 2212.41
Reposted on: 9.7.16 2212.45
Over the last couple of weeks, FM radio has been hopping with distant signals getting to central Illinois...

About a week ago, dozens of Florida stations were heard.

Cuba's Radio Reloj made it here a couple of days ago on 96.9 FM, and just today, some Colorado and Wyoming stations were heard. And just on the car radio...

Anyone else getting some enhanced summer conditions?
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Packman V2
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Y!:
#2 Posted on 9.7.09 2237.00
Reposted on: 9.7.16 2237.02
I know in CB terms they used to always refer to it as "skip rolling in", and you could contact with people cross country, but I haven't heard anything lately on the radio. I do however, remember one summer in Texas, getting a station out of Jacksonville, FL.

Leroy
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#3 Posted on 9.7.09 2304.55
Reposted on: 9.7.16 2305.59
It is the result of an inversion layer. It happens on the west coast all of the time. Because of the marine layer in Santa Barbara, the mountain on which our transmitter resides is routinely warmer than sea level. We routinely receieve San Diego radio stations, which are about 200 miles away. The station at which I work, on rare occasions, has received calls from Phoenix, AZ.

From WikiPedia:


    Similarly, very-high frequency (VHF - 30 to 300 MHz) radio waves (being part of the electromagnetic spectrum, like light) can be refracted by such inversions. This is why it is possible to sometimes hear FM radio (or watch VHF-LO band TV) broadcasts from otherwise impossible distances as far as a few hundred miles distant on foggy nights. The signal, still powerful enough to be received even at hundreds or rarely, thousands, of miles, would normally be refracted up and away from the ground-based antenna, is instead refracted down towards the earth by the temperature-inversion boundary layer. This phenomenon is called tropospheric ducting. It is also referred to as skip by small radio operators and Ham operators. Along coast lines during Autumn and Spring many FM radio stations are plagued by severe signal degradation causing them to sound like "scrambled eggs".
Lise
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#4 Posted on 10.7.09 0123.16
Reposted on: 10.7.16 0123.22
Now if I can just figure out why NPR comes in fuzzy on clear sunny days, but just fine the rest of the time...
Leroy
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#5 Posted on 10.7.09 0239.57
Reposted on: 10.7.16 0240.26
    Originally posted by Lise
    Now if I can just figure out why NPR comes in fuzzy on clear sunny days, but just fine the rest of the time...


On fuzzy days, listen to KBOO. :)
whatever
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#6 Posted on 10.7.09 0727.34
Reposted on: 10.7.16 0727.51
Today specifically was terrible for interference while listening to FM on the way to work. Normally, the two major stations I listen to come in clear as a bell, but today *both* of them were fuzzy as anything and virtually unlistenable.
Eddie Famous
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#7 Posted on 10.7.09 1316.03
Reposted on: 10.7.16 1316.18
    Originally posted by Leroy
    It is the result of an inversion layer. It happens on the west coast all of the time. Because of the marine layer in Santa Barbara, the mountain on which our transmitter resides is routinely warmer than sea level. We routinely receieve San Diego radio stations, which are about 200 miles away. The station at which I work, on rare occasions, has received calls from Phoenix, AZ.




Us hobbyists call this longer reception "E-skip" since it bounces off the E-layer in the atmosphere.
Lise
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#8 Posted on 10.7.09 1402.13
Reposted on: 10.7.16 1402.14
    Originally posted by Leroy
      Originally posted by Lise
      Now if I can just figure out why NPR comes in fuzzy on clear sunny days, but just fine the rest of the time...


    On fuzzy days, listen to KBOO. :)


I would, but there's no repeater for it. The mountains block us from Portland signals. There's only coastal broadcasting stations, and anything that has a repeater up.
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