Cyberdad Meets ES?

.....Or maybe not.

I was out doing some work in the yard yesterday afternoon (Sunday 7/20) with my SRF 37 Walkman tuned to the modulator in the house, which currently broadcasts on 92.1. Normally I get a pristine signal anywhere in the yard. But at one point out by the street, the old oldie "Kansas City" by Wilbert Harrison, came crashing through.

I was able to hold the signal until the end of the song, which fortunately led into a break. But the break was just a promo for the station containing cuts from mostly 60s oldies....but no mention of the call letters or anything that would provide a clue to the COL. Then it was gone.

I later checked Radio-locator and found oldies stations among those occupying 92.1 in Louisiana, Virginia, New Jersey and Long Island, NY (the fairly well-known WLNG). Closer to home, there were two. One from Manitowoc, WI, and another from Warsaw, IN. Each roughly 125-150 miles away from me. The 92.1 that's closest....WEZY in Racine, WI, about 50 miles away....was nowhere to be found.

Any guesses?

The first question would be, when you had the signal coming in, was it steady or was there breaks because of rapid fading from strong to nothing and back again?

The rapid fading in and out of a good signal would be characteristic of E Skip.

Tropo signals are very steady with very slow fading but some tropo signals can come in good for a minute or so and be gone the next minute, then return again or sometimes vanish for good.

I know you're a mainly AM DXer but you don't know what you're missing if you don't look for FM E Skip in May, June, and July.

gar fla said:

The first question would be, when you had the signal coming in, was it steady or was there breaks because of rapid fading from strong to nothing and back again?

The rapid fading in and out of a good signal would be characteristic of E Skip.

Click to expand...

It was "in and out" and then gone. Which is what made me suspect e skip. I went back to the channel at about 9am CDT this morning and was getting the 92.1 from Madison, WI...about 80 miles away. That one isn't unusual, and I know it as tropo.

But there was something else going on this morning. As I've posted previously, I have a weather radio in my car. I noticed that my local transmitter (162.500 mhz) was getting nipped. Then sure enough, the other six channels were lit up. A couple sounded like the graveyard channels on the AM band....completely obliterating the fringe Chicago/Milwaukee area transmitters that usually can be heard around here. I wasn't able to ID any of them, but judging by the snatches of programming that I caught, I think what I had was probably tropo. A little surprising, however, to find it at that point in the spectrum.

My grandson is at a camp up in Northern MN, and I've been regularly checking the weather up there.

There were storms passing through MN and Northern WI yesterday. Manitowoc, maybe?

That line was supposed to come through here this evening, but seems to have fallen apart. What we're left with is some warm and very humid air with a cold front coming later tonight. Not sure how that factors into the scheme of things.

There was e-skip late afternoon Central time from Michigan-Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas etc. - you might have gotten an unid 92.1 from the Rocky Mountain region or even Texas/NM.

-crainbebo