I understand that tonight there is gona be some skip on the Scanner Radio tonight. Has anyone heard yet? The Question That I have is. What time does this skip start and when does it stop. What causes this skip? And why does it happen? Is it that time of the year that skip just happends? I also understand that the Railroad Band is also Affected by this skip too. Any thoughts? Allan.
There’s a wide band in the Wisconsin Illinois area of the country for sure. People are picking up stuff from a long ways across the state that they don’t normally get.
My understanding of a skip(which may be wrong) is that it, at least in one form, has something to do solar flares from the sun. I dunno if that’s right for sure or not, somebody can probably tell you for sure.
Noah
Solar flares,atmospheric condition,and other techno-things cause it
to happen. Really not uncommon at all,sometimes worse(?) than normal.
It’s not uncommon for me to be listening to my scanner,for a city fire run;
and have it blanked out my some station several hundred miles away.
(and that’s just on my indoor antenna,when I use the outside ground plane,
it can really get cofusing)
Noah,Skip is a term long used by CBers,Hams,etc. May not be the correct
word,but that is what happens when a radio signal “skips” off the atmosphere.
…I seem to remember when skip is happening the best time is near and around sun up and sun down time of day…and it can transmit clear across the country.
“Skip” is what happens when signal skips, or bounces off the ionosphere. The ionosphere wobbles at a regular and somewhat predictable rate. But the skip is not constant, rather it’s constantly fluxuating. The effects of skip are usually seen many hundred or even a thousand or so miles away. Skip is very frequency dependant. For example AM radio around 1Mhz can skip thousands of miles away at night. That’s why only so many AM stations broadcast all night long. These AM stations like KFI in LA and KGO in the bay area are powerfull enough to reach 1/4 way around the world at night. While other stations that share frequency with the big guys don’t interfere with eachother during the day when skip is at a minimum, At night they must go off the air or every station sharing the same freq for thousands of miles would all be a jibberish of interferance. As you go up in frequency into longwave and ham radio frequencies the way skip behaves changes. I’m not an amature radio expert so I’m not going to analyse what happens at in these bands.
When you get into the low band VHF (2-6) TV channels skip is a strange phenomenon. At these frequencys it does not have as much of a daily cyclical pattern as it has a seasonal cyclical pattern. When I was a teenager in northern California I built TV antennae systems both commercial and home systems. I remember a couple of my customers in one area that for several weeks each year would get channels 2,4 and sometimes 6 out of Denver, over 1000 miles away. I also had a TV translator that several times a year would be overpowered by KCBS 2 out of LA. For those that don’t know, A translator is a way a broadcast station can extend it’s coverage. It would usually be on a mountaintop. This one was for KOTI 2 out of Klamath Falls ,Or. and was 100 miles away but KCBS 2 700 miles away would overpower it for up to a minuet at a time (it would fade in and out). Funny thing was several years later I was the head-end tech for Century cable in LA and had the opposite problem. KOTI 2 from Kl
Being an amateur radio operator, I can help with this a little bit.
As you probably know, VHF and UHF communication is considered line of sight. However, there are a number of things that can cause these relatively high frequency radio waves to travel hundreds or thousands of miles and allow long range communication.
The most common type of long range propagation this time of year is called “E” layer skip. The radio signals are refracted by the “E” layer of the atmosphere and are received many miles away from their origin. “E” layer skip occurs primarily in the summer months.
Tropospheric ducting is another kind of long range propagation that occurs when the troposhere serves as a kind of conduit, or duct, for radio waves to travel in. Tropo ducting happens a lot after strong storm systems have passed through.
The aurora borealis and meteor showers also facilitate long range VHF/UHF communications. Some amateurs spend a lot of time trying to work these two kinds of propagation. It’s tricky, and the signals are distorted and mixed in with atmospheric noise that sounds like hissing. It’s really fun to bounce a signal off of a meteor shower and talk to someone several states away.
As far as listening to trains, the most common kind of long range propagation will be summertime E skip. The sunspot cycle affects atmospheric propagation, and we are currently at the bottom of the 11 year cycle. Long range propagation is relatively poor now, but will be improving in the years to come.
Paul
Ahh! Thanks a million everyone. Now I understand.
Allan.
yea i can hear people talking from time to time on the cb radio. one will be from california, the other in florida and so on. occasionally i’ll hear some spanish speaking people talking blasting thru clear as day, i’ve heard it’s a taxi dispatcher in mexico city but who knows. anyhow, it’s pretty annoying, today it was especially prevalent.
Before we got Live Streaming, shortwave radio enthusiasts absolutely depended on ionospheric skip. It can affect the medium waves (AM) too, of course. Think of all those people who could tune into Boston hockey games.
Most if not all three-letter call stations (WGN, KSO, etc.) are clear channels without any other US assigned frequency. But not all clear-channels are three-letter: Pittsburgh’s KDKA for example is a clear channel, and it’s so old it was assigned its call letters before “W” became the customary first initial for stations east of the Mississippi.
I love radio skip. Back in the day, when I was a fire dispatcher in DuPage County, I would sometimes here fire departments from all over the country on our frequency, 154.175, or on NIFERN (State wide mutual aid channel) 154.265. It didn’t occur that often, but I remember having the scanner on one night during the Rodney King riots in LA, and I swear, to this day, I was hearing LAFD, and LA County fire dispatch for about an hour that night. There is another phenomenon too, where land features such as highways, and rail road right of ways can duct signals as well, causing them to travel long distances. We were constantly listening to Kenosha WI, and Walworth County, along with some other S. Wisconsin departments as well. We also heard alot of Indianapolis FD until they switched over to 800mHz trunked. There was also a County Sheriif from somewhere in Iowa that we would get too. Our radio guy at the fire department said that it was caused by the sun’s heating of the pavement, or the railroad tracks, and that would form a “duct” that would trap radio signals and carry them for many miles. Rivers have the same effect, because, from what I was told, radio signals skip off of water.
Getting the seasonal skip, especially during the summer, was interesting. I remember one night, having a fire dispatcher from a town in either Eastern Ohio, or Western Pennsylvania asking me to limit my radio traffic, as I was interfering with their portables. It was interesting. I still use my scanner, and from time to time, I do hear some interesting things.
This weekend, VHF signals will “skip” more due to some interesting solar flare activity. At about midnight Pacific time on Saturday and Sunday, huge flares were observed, which will contribute plenty of ionized matter to the upper atmosphere and cause a lot of signal returns. Should be a good opportunity for aurora borealis in the norhtern regions for a few days.
LOL,
Back when I was in the Army <19th SFG(A)> the Best I ever did was to skip from Guam to Washington state, on 4.7 watts… of course we used our TESEC-26 to “line” up the shot… 7000 watts at the antenna jack with a 350 Db gain antena.
Ain’t gonna jump no more…
Gunns
That very good news guys. I for one thing like it alot. I heard the BNSF all the way up in my home town that I could NEVER have heard,WOW. Ch32 was booming in. Allan.
Good info guys, and I learned a lot. Welcome to the site too Paul.
Adrianspeeder
Will the A.B. be visible from here in the USA?
Allan.
The northern lights are generally visible in the northern tier of states. I’m at about 44 degrees latitude and they often extend as much as 45-60 degrees into the sky. Very impressive.
One thing that is a real killer when it comes to watching the northern lights is light pollution. I live in the country and have virtually none on a truly clear night. I can sit in my back yard and really enjoy the show. Although my daughter lives just 70 miles south of me, calling her up and telling her about a spectacular display is a waste of time as she won’t be able to see them since she lives in a built-up area.
As for radio - I’ve heard VHF-Hi (where RR radio works) carry some pretty long distances, and not as skip. Weather can play a big part - even our VHF-Low fire radios have been having a tough time of it this summer just getting to the edges of the county.
Larry makes an excellent point. Just because you are recieving a signal from a long ways away doesn’t nessassaraly mean it’s skip. As long as you have a “line of sight” or close to it (over long distances VHF can bend up to 5 degrees) a small signal can go a long ways. I’ve built hundreds of antennae systems over the years both for in home use and commercial (SMATV,Cable TV and TV translators) and I’ve seen some pretty impressive distances for reception. It’s not uncommon to get TV signals that travel over 200 miles. And when it comes to the translators, they are usually on high mountain tops where you might have 2-3 stations that share the same channel interfering with eachother. These stations can be 300-400 miles away from eachother. Then the problem becomes phaseing out the unwanted signals. And video is AM modulation, much more sensitive to distortions than the single sideband FM that scanners use.
Consider this too. These radio transmitters broadcast hundreds of watts. Compare that to the 5-15 watts satellites in space broadcast at, And they are 23,000 miles from earth (or whatever the Clarke belt dx is) even though only a small portion of that is through atmosphere, it’s still a long distance.
As for scanners… I’ve lived in a couple places where it was nessasary to put up a rooftop antennae You might be amazed at what a performance improvement you will get. Out in Palm Desert I could get transmissions from as far away as Yuma (well over 100 miles). Of course I could only get the hand helds 30-40 miles away as they don’t have the power or quality antennae that the dispachers radio does. Also in Alturas on the Modoc line with a good aireal you can get the DS in Klamath Falls ,Or. (again 100 miles away) and even more impressive was getting the detectors over on the BNSF Highline (only 40 miles but that’s pretty good for a detector, they usually are the lowest power transmitters on the railroad). I could go on but I think I made my point. Just because you are recieveing signals from
My congrats to those of you who provided not only on point information in response to the question, but extremely educational as well.
I’m an old (emphasis - old) sea going radio telegrapher from decades past. Transmitters and receivers were of the vacuum tube generation and repairing antenna wire along with cleaning insulators while underway in not-so-gentle sea conditions was great sport. I haven’t thought out those propagation charts in years - skip- et al. [yeah]
Appreciate the good reading. [tup]
Wow, Now that sounds like an adventure.[;)] I have had several jobs that involved large towers. It took me a while before I was really comfortable working high up like that. I don’t think I could do a shipmast in rough waters though [bow]
I’d have to say my biggest adventure would be de-iceing antennaes on top of a 10,000’ mountain in a blizzard at 30 below Zero(not counting chill factor). That’s an adventure in freezing your [censored] off.
BTW-there are a lot of transmitters out there that still use vaccume tubes for the final driver.