Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!neoucom!wtm
From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Good FM and TV Dxing (long distance reception)
Summary: My best TV sporadic E-skip DXing
Message-ID: <1674@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: 4 Jul 89 02:27:58 GMT
References: <42059@bbn.COM> <1840006@hpsad.HP.COM>
Sender: wfd@neoucom.UUCP
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 42


My besxt TV DX experience was back in the spring of 1972, watching
the NBC Mystery Movie (Columbo) on what I thought was channel 3,
WKYC, in Cleveland; I live/lived just outside of Akron, Ohio, which
is about 20 miles from Cleveland.  Good reception on channel 3 at
that distance is not unexpected.

I switched the TV on at about 8:00 pm just as the Mystery Movie was
starting and thought nothing more of it until the station broke
from the network at about 20 minutes after to do local commercials.
It struck me as odd that I had never heard of any of the stores
mentioned in the commercials.  Later on, the station ID'ed itself
as (I think) WKEA, Tulsa OK, channel 2!

What had happened is that somebody had bumped the fine tuning so
that the set, a portable Magnavox B&W, was actually picking up 2
when the dial said 3.  The only antenna was about a 0.75 meter
single rabbit ear on the back of the set, and reception was
asbolutely letter perfect.  Suddenly at about 50 minutes into the
movie, the reception from Tulsa stopped almost as if somebody had
turned off a switch.

I think the effect was sporadic E skip or ducting, which occurs
mainly in the spring and early fall seasons.  Apparenlty
temperature inversions can create air layers with the correct RF
dielectric characteristics to serve as VHF waveguides of a sort.
In the case of the TV skip, it was quite dramatic.

The second best VHF DX I heard was when a guy with a 5 watt 2 meter
rig in a car talked into the Cuyaghoga Falls W8VPV repeater from
Buffalo NY; that's around 300 mi, I think.  That was just after
Christmas, an unusual time for that sort of skip.

My own best DX was using a cheap car CB with a short whip antenna.
I was on I-71 near Mansfield, OH.  The radio was acting up, so I
tuned to ch. 11, which as a popular local channel.  I asked for a
radio check, and a person in Cincinatti replied.  That was a couple
hundred mile QSO, but then 27 MHz doesn't exactly qualify as VHF
either.

Bill
wtm@impulse.UUCP