On another thread I've been talking to some guys in PA about the lowband traffic still in service in their area. Here in Texas, we get their skip on 33.90, 33.10, 33.74 and some other channels, but the past few months it's been very quiet. One of the guys says that the lowband skip conditions are quiet right now due to a low cycle. So I'm looking forward to the next cycle when I can hear the northeastern traffic again.
However, the short skip has been running rampant lately down here. I am in Midland, which is half-way between Ft. Worth and El Paso right on I-20. I've been getting quite a bit of traffic from the Central Texas area, as well as the Panhandle (Lubbock and Amarillo)....not to mention some traffic from Clovis and Portales,NM. All of that is on VHF-highband. The unusual thing is a bit of skip on 800. Midland has an EDACS trunking system, and I've been getting some traffic on one of their EMS channels. Haven't been able to catch an ID, but it's certainly not local; but I didn't realize that skip could run on 800 like that!
Newyawka: On lowband that CB antenna won't hurt anything, as the CB frequencies are all 27 mhz...but on AM, not FM. When I lived in Lubbock, I lived in a 7-story apartment building and was allowed to have antennas on the roof. I had an old Motorola lowband base radio, to which I connected an old plain-jane CB groundplane antenna. Not only did it receive up a storm...it did a fair job of transmitting as well.
