It's the beginning of tropo season

[gar fla]

At least here along the Gulf coast, March and April is the prime season and that spreads north as it gets warmer.

In the past two years, I've gotten some good catches here in Tampa.

Miami - 200 miles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcDkM02oHcM

Lafayette, Louisiana - 600 miles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDjpaQ45tPo

Brownsville, Texas - 936 miles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkRK9nP1Li8


The weird thing is, I've never heard any FM station in a tropo catch north of Savannah, Georgia.


Here's the Tropo Ducting forecast map from DX Information Center ... 

http://www.dxinfocentre.com/tropo_nat.html
 

[Tincap]

I'm not very technical gar, but looking at these maps, it appears that Saturday would be a good day for you to snag potential catches from the Caribbean, eh???

No tropo here yet, but I get a lot of fringe stuff, in the 200 mile range, with Toronto/Buffalo being a big source of those.

Speaking of fringe, I've picked up (7.1 kW) 89.1 WBSU 'The Point' Brockport NY, at 154 miles, for the first time. A nice little surprise, as CHUO usually occupies the dial. Can't wait for tropo/E-skip season, using my Luxman/FM-6 and Grundig G8 set ups!

~BG

[cyberdad]

I'm really not a big FMDX guy, but on my trips to the Pensacola area (Perdido Key), on an upper floor of a beach condo, there's usually some interesting tropo that sets up along the coast to New Orleans.  I'll be there in three weeks and anxious to see if it might be "up and running" by then 160 miles). 

It also works in the other direction with Panama City stations occasionally blasting in like locals (120 miles).

[gar fla]

I'm not very technical gar, but looking at these maps, it appears that Saturday would be a good day for you to snag potential catches from the Caribbean, eh???

 

I've never heard any FM tropo from the Caribbean, not that I was aware of anyway.

While those maps are certainly helpful, the real classic tropo happens when there is a consistent orange color or higher between two locations.

[cd637299]

I had a rare 3 days in July 1992 with *monster* Caribbean tropo to my home near Miami....PR, Dominican Republic, Bahamas, Jamaica, and Cuban FM that might never come back here.  One of my YouTube clips ( www.youtube.com/cd637299 ) is a poor recption of WKAQ ch 2 during this time, but it was tropo!

In June 2006 from the Florida Keys came in FM from PR & DR...on a Sunday afternoon of all things....

I also got Praise FM Cayman Islands (87.9, so no QRM ha) last year.

It can be done 

cd