This is what sporadic E skip is like. Multiple radio stations battling themselves for dominance.
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Saralynne_Brennan 🏳️🌈
Ooo love love love. I could listen for hours
Doug Lee
In roughly 1983, I picked up WVYC, in the Maine / Rhode Island area somewhere, on an FM radio in central Illinois. Totally blew my mind and officially started my interest in FM skip. I haven't messed with it for many years by now though. Large residential buildings sorta don't lend themselves to it like that old town-outskirts house did.
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Brice Belcher
Nice! This recording was done online with a remote server located in Bartow Florida, although I had some fair share of skipping Columbus this morning. Also, I'll have to get those records from my Zoom and share those later.
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jessc
Wow. How cool. Have had it happen a couple times on fm, but was never able to pin down the station. It was during a thunderstorm.
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Brice Belcher
I had that happen too, but the weather patterns don't really affect Skip, it's all in the ionosphere, it has everything to do with the sun and the E layer. However, the weather can play a role in tropo propagation.
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jessc
Used to do this as a kid on the am band. Not so much now though. Picked up a station from Montreal Quebec, and I live in the southwestern US. It's over 2,300 miles away. Fun memories.
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jessc
Yes, right on, Bryce. ☺️
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Brice Belcher
I did the same thing too, but recently as I got older, I tried FM, it's a whole different ball game, but it can still be done.
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zackmack2000
It's even cooler with weather radio. Many years ago I picked up stations all the way from Arkansas to Florida and I live in Mississippi. This went on for a whole weekend.
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jessc
Wow, Zackmack.
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Brice Belcher
Never really did weather radio, but have heard lots of stuff can be picked up since it is VHF.
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zackmack2000
This took place durring the good ole days of dectalk on weather radio. I loved it.
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jessc
Bryce, what do you need for fm skipping?Any special equipment?
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jessc
Pretty cool Zackmac. Hope all are having a good day.
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Brice Belcher
You could always start out small, but for me, I have the Qodosen DX 286, and I also have the Tecsun PL 880. You might also want to check out the FM DX Webserver online, many people host their radios remotely online that people can tune.
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zackmack2000
One of the things I did a long time ago in an airplane of all places was see how weather radio was in the sky. Absolute craziness. Skip all over the place. Thankfully it didn't interfear with anything. I was using a very old radio shak am fm tv weather radio receiver that looked like a cell phone that used the ear phone jack as an Antenna.
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Brice Belcher
I always wanted to do that shit, I wondered what it would be like to do something like that with my stuff, though how could it possibly interfere with anything? But you should take a look at the DX 286, it's a really small radio, but does really good because of the automotive chip built in. It would be a great plane radio too because it's literally pocket sized..
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Albert
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Brice Belcher
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zackmack2000
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Doug Lee
On interference on planes: I understand that a single radio or phone won't mess up navigation, but a whole bunch of them at once might. FM radios actually transmit a weak signal that you can pick up as a blank spot on another nearby radio 10 points above where the first one is tuned; for example, when I listened to radio station WCBU Peoria Illinois at 90 or so FM, my brother would yell at me for blocking out his listening of WYMG at 100.5 FM.
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Brice Belcher
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jessc
Interesting topic and everyone chiming in, great.
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jessc
Is this the right radio you mentioned earlier?
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jessc
https://a.co/d/0fTEO1rk
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jessc
Currently using a cc-radio from like 20 years ago. lol
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Brice Belcher
Yep that's the one.
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jessc
Great, thanks, Brice.
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jessc
I have no vision. Would this radio be ok for someone who cannot see the display? I've used lots of stuff that was not accessible. Just meaning, is it easy to learn and get options you want sorted out?
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Brice Belcher
Once you get the hang of things, you should be able to use it. I've had mine since like 2024.
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Albert
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Brice Belcher
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