longer range skip?

[VA3JWO]

i live in a little town called madoc, which is about 45 minutes north of belleville, for those of you that don't know. this year, there has only been 2 times that i was able to listen to southern new york and northern pennsylvania VHF sheriff frequencies, and lots of other times to listen to northern and central/ eastern new york state sheriffs, which isn't all that far from what i've read in previous forums and pages across the internet. i'm using a uniden bcd396T with a watson 16" super gainer antenna with a GRE 20dB super amplifier. I guess my question is, am i using the right setup? or does vhf hi skip/ tropo not generally go that far compared to VHF Lo skip? also, is the skip going to get better in years to come? or is it only going to get worse? when are the best times to listen?
just curious

will

 

[Sweetbritches]

I have found VHF high band skip to be great mostly in the later evenings like after 10pm EST and early morning like 5AM or before to just after sunrise around 6AM. As far as low band skip is is only going to get better as the 11 year sunspot cycle comes closer due to peak in 2012 or 2013. Last cycle had 2 peaks. On my BC 245 XLT i heard 10 meters open on my rubber duckie inside the house waqs marginal but outside was great. During the summer openings this past summer the best place i found to listen on the same scanner was on my car roof just left the scanner there and stood for hours afraid to move for fear of losing my skip signals. I think when skip is in almost any setup is good. I have found a way to hear more signals. I wrapped a wire around my duckie for a few inches and then bent the end of the wire closest to the top straight up for 8 inches it really helped. The bottom of the wire is just coiled and neither end connected to anything.Listening post Climax,VA route 799@anderson mill road. Donna

 

[VA3JWO]

thank you very much for the kind reply and for the tips. I used to own the uniden BC245XLT. I, Sure miss it though, it was a great scanner, but now i have the digital one which works good too.

will

 

[CalebATC]

I have found VHF high band skip to be great mostly in the later evenings like after 10pm EST and early morning like 5AM or before to just after sunrise around 6AM. As far as low band skip is is only going to get better as the 11 year sunspot cycle comes closer due to peak in 2012 or 2013. Last cycle had 2 peaks. On my BC 245 XLT i heard 10 meters open on my rubber duckie inside the house waqs marginal but outside was great. During the summer openings this past summer the best place i found to listen on the same scanner was on my car roof just left the scanner there and stood for hours afraid to move for fear of losing my skip signals. I think when skip is in almost any setup is good. I have found a way to hear more signals. I wrapped a wire around my duckie for a few inches and then bent the end of the wire closest to the top straight up for 8 inches it really helped. The bottom of the wire is just coiled and neither end connected to anything.Listening post Climax,VA route 799@anderson mill road. Donna

I used to catch the Macdill AFB ATIS on UHF and VHF very clear 100 miles away (Hard to get 30nm away with a average setup!), it was mostly about 10:30 at night, and was peaking certain nights during June, and July. I remember one night when I did live in Florida, that I could hear even Tampa ATIS clear, when I added a preamp... things got really clear, until I blew it out using 55 watts (oops!!!) :/