That would be real nice and thank you. I kind of live in a fishbowl so to speak at my 650 ft above sea level location. I've got outside towers but my best receiving direction from the Fort Worth area that I live in is back to the west/southwest.
I often can pick up Erath County, Stephenville, and a few of the areas down to the east/southeast of Abilene. In fact, I use the NOAA weather radio sites to often listen and tell where the best reception is coming from and I just about always pick up a few of the different stations from Abilene and back down through the area we're talking about. It's the one big opening I have that isn't blocked by some sort of terrain. So it does make sense that it could have easily been that direction that the traffic I was monitoring might have been coming from.
I can still pick up Dallas and locations like that to my east but unless there's some kind of good propagation I do not receive too far out in East Texas.
On a side note, I did have an interesting 2-meter contact back a couple of months ago when we had some superb propagation and I talked with a guy for about 45 minutes that was in the northeast part of Louisiana and only about 5 miles from being in Mississippi. Needless to say that was not usual but it was enjoyable and a 350 miles away rare VHF contact.
It's been a while since I've been able to get down to Stephenville or Abilene or any of those locations so I would be interested in what you find. And I appreciate you checking while you're down that way.
Oh yeah, and by the way, there was one more agency I confirmed for the first time down that direction just a couple of weeks ago. I was listening late one night / early one morning and heard Hico PD. I did not even realize they had a PD and the last time I drove through there myself, 20 years ago, I don't think they did have a police department then?
Since that direction, southwest of me, is an area I can often receive, I'm interested in any reports from down there! I'm surprised at how much conventional traffic there still is in that direction and I enjoyed coming across it searching the VHF Hi band on some of those good reception days. I really enjoyed the DXing and any station, and in any direction, then I'm able to hear or confirm if something I really enjoy finding and putting in my frequency database I started back around 1988 I believe it was. Needless to say a lot of the entries I've gathered across the country as I used to travel are DOA or no longer any good, some of these conventional users still do use some of their old frequencies and that is kind of interesting when I compare it to the last time I logged it in years gone by.I'm hoping to get out to Dyess Air Force Base with a friend before the year ends to watch some of the B-1B bombers taking off and landing as well as listening to them. I've always enjoyed that part of Texas out there in the Erath County and Stevens County proximity. I just haven't been there in close to 20 years but I hope I do get to make it as we've planned over the last year to go back and check out!
Okay, I'm going to stop rambling on now
Thanks again for the help!
Brian (COMMSCAN)
