It's great to hear from
you guys. I am very happy
with the Big Talker, so far.
This reminds me of an interesting
propagation story, which I will
tell as soon as I can.
Bruce, X-13, 13.560
I hope I don't get interrupted.
So, I'm in Connecticut.
Sometime long ago, I = and
a friend - were listening to
a local station on 88.9 MHz.
(Or semi-local.) WJMJ, on the
line between Farmington and Bristol,
CT. 6200 watts ERP, about 12 miles
away. I was in West Hartford.
Uh oh, here comes an E-skip opening.
Suddenly, with the craziness that only
E-skip can cause, here comes KJLU, 88.9, Jefferson City, MO. From Lincoln University, at 29,500 watts ERP.
Blammo!
WJMJ on 88.9 is obliterated, and
covered by the Jefferson City, MO
signal for about an hour.
Yikes! I always got a real kick
out of this sort of thing.
From Hartford to Jefferson City,
it's about 1050 miles, which is
a typical E-skip distance. Then
if you take into account the
distance up to the E layer and
back down, I guess you can add
another 50 or 100 miles to the
distance. I'm probably a little
off with my math, but I'm in a
hurry. The E layer lurks up there
in the 95 to 120 miles range, up
from the Earth, anyway.
The local station has to travel
to my receiver through 70,000
or 80,000 feet (again my math
is probably off) of rocks, trees,
houses, cars, people, dogs, tall
grass, telephone poles and wires,
trucks, cats, moose, etc, etc.
But the Jefferson City signal just
has to go up to the E-layer and
down again, with very little
attenuaton at the reflecting point.
Even though the distance it travels
is much much greater than the local
station, it blows the local away.
(It's a free space path.)
And the local is gone. And it
doesn't come back until the
E-cloud moves away, or dissolves.
KJLU's signal collapses like a
bunch of stacked playing cards
abruptly falling apart, and back
comes local WJMJ, as if it never
left in the first place.
I love this stuff.
Bruce, W 60 HZ, X=13