How far can you hear??

[CapnJon]

Between 3 different houses in the past 15 years I seem to average about 150 miles on the average of a 45+ foot mast and my 9 foot stainless whip scanner antenna...

My system is a Pro-2050 w/ a Uniden 25+db gain pre-amp and my BC296D portable...

My present location is about 2,000 feet up but i'm running the whip just off the peak of the house but I hear way into Minnesota (150+ Miles) and almost to Lake Michigan to the Wisconsin side and most of the west and central part of the Upper Peninsula.

I will get my tower up again this month and it will be 40 foot plus the beam antenna on top, but will run my trusty 9 foot stainless steel whip instead of a discone set-up...

What is everyone else using and how far can you pick-up??

 

[djeplett]

I'd say my listening area has a radius of about 50 miles from New London, WI. That's with the right angle back-of-radio BNC telescopic whip on VHF. My UHF is much worse. Maybe only 30 miles. And 800MHz is... well... :lol:

So we'll see how that improves when I put up my old Rat Shack base antenna on the roof.

 

[safetyobc]

http://www.ka5cvh.com/prs/linesite.htm

This article talks alot about picking up distant signals.

I usually be about 50 to 75 miles on my base antenna at 20'

 

[LordJ]

re:How far can you hear

Running a 20-176 on my 780xlt about 30' in the air I can get about 75km range on most days in the 140mhz band...I am looking at using an old TV tower I have to get the antenna up higher. It is still not higher than the houses on the East & West of me so I know I can do better..

 

[squale]

is it usually that lower bands you pick up further away or the opposite? for instance, I want to get civil air bands, around the 108-137mhz, will these come through further away than say something in the 50mhz range? or compared to something in the 800mhz range?

how far should I be able to get with a discone antenna in airband, my house is at 1700msl and all the airports are around 400msl or lower but they are good 25-30 miles away

 

[twolf816]

remember than aircraft can be heard for hundreds of miles because they are thousands of feet in the air, but u may not be able to hear the tower unless ur close by

 

[squale]

yeah but that's what I'm asking, do you think 25-30 miles is too far away to hear the tower?

 

[CapnJon]

What is a MSL?? that Meters??

 

[LarrySC]

From my location here in SC I can hear a frog fart in Fargo.

 

[flyingwolf]

Mean Sea Level.

Measure of height.

 

[CapnJon]

Squale...

I too cannot hear the tower unless I am on the road just 5-10 miles away from it. :?:

 

[Thayne]

Why is it that my wife can hear me fart in the garage; yet when she is sleeping I can blow the bedspread off and she doesn't flinch??

I wish I could sleep that soundly :roll:

 

[Tweekerbob]

I can hear all around the world with a 80 meter dipole. No joke, literally thousands of miles!!

Capn'Jon, I hate to say it, but you really won't be picking up anything very much further with your tower and beam than what you are currently hearing. With the beam, some of the weaker stations may be coming in a bit stronger, but they won't be any further away.

There is a thing called curvature of the earth that limits Line of Sight as some (sum) people say: lein of site.

If you want to hear stuff far away now is the time. Scan the from the lowest frequency your equipment will go up to 54MHz and over the next month of so, with some patience, you may hear signals several hundred to over a thousand miles away.

 

[squale]

why is now the time versus anytime of the year?

 

[nd5y]

Sporadic E skip occurs most often in the late spring and early summer in the nothern hemisphere.