Skip/DX/Propagation

[west-pac]

Anyone else hearing a lot of distant stations or counties? I noticed very early this morning I could receive SAFE-T sites from ~60+ miles away, and VHF/UHF up to 150 miles away.

At 3am I was listening to Chicago police dept's "Citywide 2" channel on 460Mhz, from 40 miles south of Fort Wayne. That was a very interesting listen, compared to how things work around Northeast Indiana.

 

[217]

At 3am I was listening to Chicago police dept's "Citywide 2" channel on 460Mhz, from 40 miles south of Fort Wayne. That was a very interesting listen, compared to how things work around Northeast Indiana.

A great catch with the UHF. I looked at the license and the Aon Center at 200 East Randolph Street in Chicago has a few CPD antennas on the roof. Its over 1100ft tall. I did some rough calculations and you are near line of sight with the Aon building.

Aon rooftop

 

[Garymaxon1234]

Back before all the fancy digital trunked systems. Ball State Physical Plant was on a UHF analog frequency. When the conditions were right, we would hear Chicago buses and I think shuttle buses at The Indianapolis airport.

 

[scanmanmi]

VHF does well in the morning. You were hearing tropospheric ducting. It can be measured and predicted. There's even a Forum for it!

Skip / Tropospheric Ducting Forum

Discussion of Skip and Tropospheric Ducting Monitoring

forums.radioreference.com

VHF Propagation Map

aprs.mennolink.org

N5PA Website - VHF/UHF Page

Personal weather station.

www.n5pa.com

On a good day we could pick up South Bend TV from Chicago.

 

[FFPM571]

There is / was a VHF fire repeater output that was on 154.145 146.2PL in Central indiana that when the conditions were right would key up the Ducomm Fire East repeater outside Chicago that used the same input as their output. One morning they had a working structure fire that kept our repeater tied up for hours til the conditions changed . The signal was so strong that they could not turn off the remote receivers and voters that were getting overloaded. We had to switch to an alternate repeater channel.