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Archer Jack

Archer Jack

Pre-takeoff checklist
Joined
Oct 24, 2018
Messages
302
Location
Mansfield, TX
Display Name
Display name:
Jack
So I'm with the wife flying from Grand Prairie over to Sulphur Springs, TX for a quick $100 burger this morning and as I'm listening to the ctaf coming in for landing at KSLR I hear a transmission going out to North Little Rock traffic. I thought I had misheard but, sure enough, here comes another one from North Little Rock. I was a little over 200nm from North Little Rock at the time. Wx was severe clear and I was at 4500 ft. I think that is the most distant radio transmission I have ever received. Of course I don't get out that much. :cheers:
 
Was it a corporate jet in the flight levels calling inbound to the FBO? If it was calls in the pattern, that’s pretty impressive range.
 
Radar Contact said:
Was it a corporate jet in the flight levels calling inbound to the FBO? If it was calls in the pattern, that’s pretty impressive range.
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Good question! I believe it was in the pattern but I couldn't swear to it. Calling in from flight levels would explain the long transmission distance. Lover your videos and that beautiful 310 btw. Go Dawgs!
 
Archer Jack said:
Good question! I believe it was in the pattern but I couldn't swear to it. Calling in from flight levels would explain the long transmission distance. Lover your videos and that beautiful 310 btw. Go Dawgs!
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Thank you :)

Go DAWGS!!
 
He probably had to be above 10k for you to hear that.
Two planes at 3500AGL with no significant terrain between them should be able to hear each other from 145 miles away given a strong enough transmitter.
 
Every once in a while the atmospherics are just right and you can get a lot of range. We once talked to another sailboat 400 miles from us on 25watt VHF radios, it was mid to late am.
 
Archer Jack said:
So I'm with the wife flying from Grand Prairie over to Sulphur Springs, TX for a quick $100 burger this morning and as I'm listening to the ctaf coming in for landing at KSLR I hear a transmission going out to North Little Rock traffic. I thought I had misheard but, sure enough, here comes another one from North Little Rock. I was a little over 200nm from North Little Rock at the time. Wx was severe clear and I was at 4500 ft. I think that is the most distant radio transmission I have ever received. Of course I don't get out that much. :cheers:
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He was lost
 
Line of sight...the more altitude, the farther you can hear. I have talked from Mount Mitchell to Greensboro, NC on a one watt walkie talkie many times.
 
Back in the 80s I would often sit out in the car at night listening to a station broadcasting from Homer, Alaska.

I was on Oahu.
 
We were out on maneuvers at Ft. Benning one night in the spring of 1969 and picked up the radio from a fire fight in Vietnam on the PRC-77.
 
You can get rf ducting too. But that’s much more common over water with an inversion. It’s not uncommon for folks to talk on vhf from California to Hawaii.
73
 
Initial Fix said:
You can get rf ducting too. But that’s much more common over water with an inversion. It’s not uncommon for folks to talk on vhf from California to Hawaii.
73
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Yep. On VHF I’ve talked from a Florida west coast repeater to New Orleans a few times when we had an inversion layer.

73
AJ4CM
 
Plano Pilot said:
Every once in a while the atmospherics are just right and you can get a lot of range. We once talked to another sailboat 400 miles from us on 25watt VHF radios, it was mid to late am.
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idahoflier said:
Could be troposhperic ducting...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_propagation
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That would be a good guess.

jnmeade said:
There has been a lot of skip on 2 meters in the last few weeks.
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More likely tropospheric ducting.

jnmeade said:
We were out on maneuvers at Ft. Benning one night in the spring of 1969 and picked up the radio from a fire fight in Vietnam on the PRC-77.
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Given the frequency range of a PRC-77, that is impressive. Very impressive. I remember using 77s in ROTC in the early 1970s.
 
All over the west, at night, you can listen to KGO 880 in San Francisco. "I" think it is because the transmitters are over water.
1200px-KGO-AM_transmission_towers_SF_Bay.jpg
 
We had a nice little round table going last summer between a Fort worth repeater, one in southern Mississippi and one in Orlando. No matter who keyed up, all tree repeaters came online. We had about 25 people in the conversation and it kept up for at least 2 hours before conditions went away.

Good friend used to have his copilot dial up WBAP as soon as they hit 10K feet coming out of Hawaii on the trips back to DFW...
 
Craig said:
Good friend used to have his copilot dial up WBAP as soon as they hit 10K feet coming out of Hawaii on the trips back to DFW...
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The Bill Mack show..... AKA the midnight cowboy and the truck drivers friend at night....
 
I was able to track a San Francisco radio station all the way from Gallup, NM to California. I thought the frequency was 1290 or 1310, but those stations are gone now...
 
A few years back, I was able to pick up a Toronto FM station here in Roswell. If I went about 5 miles east of here, I'd lose it. I got a coworker who lives nearby, he had the same experience, we both could pick it up near our homes but not at our office 10 miles east.
 
kgruber said:
All over the west, at night, you can listen to KGO 880 in San Francisco. "I" think it is because the transmitters are over water.
1200px-KGO-AM_transmission_towers_SF_Bay.jpg
Click to expand...

KGO is 810 kHz, not 880 kHz. I used to listen to it all the time. 50 kW into a broadside array, aimed up and down the Pacific coast.

The Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 resulted in KGO having to rebuild their antennas. One was down completely, the second lost part of its length (rendering it unusable) and the third was leaning at an angle. They ran 10 kW omnidirectionally for a time while the "farm" was rebuilt. Our house was about 6 miles from the epicenter of that quake. What a mess.
 
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