Skip this morning

[LEH]

I'm sitting in the living room, working from home, with the scanner (BC796) going. I have the old York County fire dispatch still programmed in. That is 154.400MHz. The antenna is an old RS mag mount scanner antenna sitting on the front porch.

Anyway, I am picking up NYFD Queens alarms. I just went to the NYFD page in the data base and verified the frequency and to another page to verify the unit assignments for Queens (not to mention that I'm now hearing "Ladder XXX to Queens").

So let me see, I am somewhere around 290 to 300 miles (air mile, not driving) from NYC and NYFD is coming in loud and clear right now.

I don't know what I'd do if I lived in an area where there was THAT much action on the scanner.

I am posting this in both the Virginia and New York forums, just for S&G's.

 

[mylt1]

i pick up FDNY when there is a fog bank sitting off the coast. its pretty neat to hear it every once and a while. last time i heard them they had a partial building collapse with a 3rd story balcony falling onto the 2nd story balcony with rescue.

 

[tuttleje]

It's tropospheric ducting. Check out this link for additional information and forecasting for future events:

http://www.dxinfocentre.com/tropo.html

As you can see from the charts for today, there was very strong ducting from the New York area to Virginia.

 

[LEH]

tuttleje,

Thanks for the link. I've never really followed the various types of skip and such. Very interesting. As mylt1 said, once the fog lifted, the reception died.

I used to travel to the Newark, NJ area and would listent to NYFD in the hotel room. Better than anything on TV. Kind of nice to hear the level of action again.

I was actually in the city (Manhattan sight seeing) when fire truck after fire truck after fire truck kept going by. They had a working high rise fire in a hotel near the Empire State building. They went to a 5th alarm (at that time the only thing left for a response was what they called a boro call [basically all the apparatus in the boro to respond]). As scanning is illegal in NYC, I'd left the scanner in the car at the parking lot.

The fifth alarm wound up putting more apparatus on scene than many medium size cities have in their entire department.

Still a lot of action when I got back and was headed back to the hotel.