DX newbie wondering if I really heard that far

[Jay911]

Hey folks,

Excuse my ignorance. I was parked on a relatively high location in the eastern side of the Canadian Rocky Mountains yesterday during the day (0800 to 1700 MDT, or 1400 to 2300 UTC) - here's the location - https://goo.gl/maps/YPwE3 - working a car rally, and had a bunch of time to fiddle with my radios. My BCD436HP scanner was hooked up to an Austin Spectra mobile antenna on my vehicle, and I was listening to both the simplex ham freqs in the RRDB as well as doing "conventional discovery" sessions in VHF Low band. I received plenty of signals in the 28-36 MHz range, particularly what sounded like Fire and EMS services in the Eastern time zone, with decidedly NY/MA accents. (I haven't had time to check the recordings out properly and do a search for the freq/tone on RR.)

The one that really caught my attention was the multiple contacts people were making on 29.600. I could hear a guy in Lake Forest, IL quite clearly and he made quite a few contacts with people I could hear with varying levels of strength, all of it rather good. Some of the ones that I recall include a Scottish-accented voice (which I admit could have been anywhere), Texas, an undisclosed location in Japan, and Caracas, Venezuela.

Was I really hearing these stations across that distance with that kind of clarity, or was there some kind of repeater or streaming involved? I know skip/DX can travel great distances, but Venezuela not only to Illinois but also to west central Canada? If that is genuine, color me impressed.

 

[nd5y]

29.6 is the 10m FM common simplex frequency.

If the band is open it is not uncommon to be able to work other continents from North America on 10 meters using a 100W or less mobile station.

Lots of hams talk on it direct but there are also a lot of VHF/UHF repeaters and link systems with remote bases on 29.6 and a some of the repeaters and remote bases are are RoIP linked or have local or RF links.

There is no telling what you might have heard or where the actual transmitters you heard were located. The people talking on a 29.6 remote base may not be anywhere near where the remote base is located.

There are also a lot of repeaters on 29.62, 29.64, 29.66 and 29.68 with a the inputs 100 kHz lower. There is no telling what you might hear on them also.

One of my friends in the Dallas/Fort Worth area operates a UHF repeater with a remote base and streams it on Broadcastify. http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/13377 . You might even hear me on it occasionally.

 

[Jay911]

Thanks. I understood it was the 10m common channel, but I figured there had to be some kind of linking going on.

 

[IdleMonitor]

29.600 fm is a 10m ham repeater. So the input frequency was carrying the radio traffic to the output of the repeater. There are many of these 10m ham repeaters around the US.

 

[SCPD]

The one that really caught my attention was the multiple contacts people were making on 29.600. I could hear a guy in Lake Forest, IL quite clearly and he made quite a few contacts with people I could hear with varying levels of strength, all of it rather good. Some of the ones that I recall include a Scottish-accented voice (which I admit could have been anywhere), Texas, an undisclosed location in Japan, and Caracas, Venezuela.

Was I really hearing these stations across that distance with that kind of clarity, or was there some kind of repeater or streaming involved? I know skip/DX can travel great distances, but Venezuela not only to Illinois but also to west central Canada? If that is genuine, color me impressed.

I was hearing 29.4 Mhz FM yesterday and it was two Japanese guys talking. Skip was in yesterday!

 

[Jay911]

I was hearing 29.4 Mhz FM yesterday and it was two Japanese guys talking. Skip was in yesterday!

I may have actually heard that one too. Like I say, I have to assess my recordings yet. I also definitely heard a Spanish "numbers station", or at least a guy reciting numbers en español.

 

[ka3jjz]

As ND5Y correctly points out, 29.6 is a ham 10 meter simplex channel - however there are several remote bases, and some folks that have even put up links from 2 meters to 29.6 and other frequencies as well.

I suspect a bit of F2 or sporadic E skip (Es) here. The mechanics of Es are not fully understood; one observation is that during a sunspot peak (yes I know we're really not in a peak, but by some accounts we might be in a lull between a rare double peak, but that's going way out on a limb here....) Es happens much less frequently than F2. We didn't get hit by an expected solar wind stream according to Spaceweather, so it's hard to put a finger on the exact mechanics. The Japanese log tends to suggest F2.

We're kinda veering away from the forum restrictions (remember under 30 Mhz here) but as a point of information, that same phenomenon can affect frequencies way up past 50 Mhz (6 meter ham DXers know this well). It can even happen on higher frequencies if strong enough - up to 440 Mhz or even beyond in very rare cases.

If you're interested in skip topics above 30 Mhz, we have a separate forum for that...

Skip / Tropospheric Ducting Forum - The RadioReference.com Forums

and for 10 meter ham topics

Working Distant Stations - The RadioReference.com Forums

I'll leave this thread open for the time being for reports of non-ham freqs in the 25-30 Mhz range during the period Jay911 observed. Onward with the reporting...Mike

 

[N9JCQ]

Did you get the guy's callsign in Lake Forest? He is likely in my ham club (NS9RC). We also have a 10 Meter beacon too.

 

[Jay911]

Did you get the guy's callsign in Lake Forest? He is likely in my ham club (NS9RC). We also have a 10 Meter beacon too.

Don't think so. I got one callsign for a guy in Paris, TX, and one American callsign that I remember ended in OOO (oscar oscar oscar), who was CQ'ing pretty much anywhere he could hear someone talking (CQ Japan, CQ Venezuela, etc).

 

[Boombox]

FWIW, I heard a Uruguayan ham on a 10 Meter FM repeater in the late 1980's (on an FRG-7), long before streaming, so I believe that the OP could very well have heard South American stations caught on the repeater he heard ( -- i.e. I don't think streaming would be necessary for such stations to be monitored on 10 M FM).

 

[ka3jjz]

One more time - 10 meter (28-29.7 Mhz) discussions belong in the ham forums. Please use them to continue that topic

Mike