It is all about the skip!
Like someone said. It is all about the atmospheric skip conditions.
I am in California and back in the day I used to have no problems talking to Australia, New Zealand, The Philippines, and so on.
When skip was rolling hard.... a better question would be.....
Has anyone been able to talk to someone from your own town?
"""Breaker... Go ahead breaker.... This is so and so and hows the traffic out there?..... Its good here on the 45 in Dallas..... But I am in California.... Oh, so how traffic there in California?"""