If you heard Phoenix in Washington, it’s a phenomenon known as “ducting.” If the atmospheric conditions are right, you will be able to pick up FM radio and TV signals from abnormally long distances away, for brief periods. This is a fairly rare occurrence.
I saw a website once where people who were really into the hobby of TV ducting reception posted pictures of the TV screen showing the station ID, and listed their distance from the stations. When I was a kid, I remember seeing Channel 5 from Detroit one day, when there was no Channel 5 in our area. It was there for a short period, then it went away for good. That was ducting.
When I first got a SW radio I picked up Radio Tirana while fiddling around with the dial and enjoying the novelty of the thing. IIRC they were playing a song called “Here Comes the Brigade of Partisans”.
Growing up in NZ, I had a shortwave radio and often picked up the BBC World Service, Radio Moscow, and The Voice Of America. I’ve also picked up China Radio International and Deutsche Welle, too, as well as a couple of South-East Asian stations I couldn;t identify because I couldn’t understand what they were saying.
I can also get Radio New Zealand without too much trouble, but that isn’t really that exciting.
Because the whole point of shortwave is to listen to things that aren’t near you. And most of the time you can pick up stuff that is very far away. The coolness factor of picking something up that’s far away on your regular commercial radio band is much higher (IMO).
I remember one occassion where I had to relay through a trucker about 50 miles away to get in touch with some guys I could see through my binoculars over C.B. Some freak atmospheric conditions, I guess; he could talk to them, they could talk to him, but we couldn’t talk to each other directly even though we were less than a mile apart. Strange day.
But that’s probably not what you meant either.
Hmm. Best I can do for regular, non-shortwave radio is picking up, very faintly, what claimed to be the “Voice of Honolulu” on my radio when I was sitting on the balcony of a hotel in San Diego. I know it was an AM station, but damned if I know where it was really located. It was pretty static-y, but I imagine it was a local repeater station of some sort rather than, y’know, coming all the way from Hawaii.
I tuned into WRKO Boston 680AM in Augusta GA once while on a business trip. WBZ 1030 was also available there that same night. (that’s a clear channel station, so I’m not surprised)
Depending on where you are, ducting can be quite common. We get widespread temperature inversions* around here in the dry season. This often causes extended ranges for our VHF radios. We might hear transmissions from 400nm away when usually where lucky to hear them at 100nm
*An increase in temperature with altitude, it prevents the usual rising of warm air through the atmosphere and may result in a trapped layer of smoke/cloud/crap. Ducting between the layer and the ground is common.
While living near the bottom of a hill in Lake Oswego, OR, I picked up a college football game being broadcast from Wyoming.
also
While driving from Reno home to San Jose, I picked up KXL (I think, maybe KEX?) out of Portland, OR. I found it just outside of Truckee and the signal held out past Vacaville. It was late at night, so Art Bell was on.
…when I was a teenager growing up in NE Minn, on cold, clear winter nights I could listen to WLS from Chicago. Fond memories of John “Records” Landecker
and BOOGIE CHECK!!!
Back in the early eighties, I had temporarily moved back with my parents sometime after Hurricane Iwa. I bring this up because during the Hurricane, I got into the habit of listening to the radio during the times the power had gone out for days at a time. My favorite radio station was just sold and many of the syndicated shows were in limbo and it went off the air abruptly. By twisting the radio into unusual positions, I began getting faint broadcasts of some blow hard named Rush Limbaugh on some unnamed station. :o He would talk big then someone would call in and call him on it and he would back down like a sat on whoopee cushion. For a while I thought I was getting a signal from California but I later found that to be true, in a sense, since it was in reality being rebroadcast from a station on Maui. Ironically, when the station I was listening too came back on the air, it started featuring Rush.
FM: about four years ago, I experienced some great tropospheric ducting about 150 km west of Lubbock, Texas, where I received FM stations from Fort Meyers, Naples and Tampa, Florida as if the transmitter was just a few miles away. There wasn’t an empty slot on the dial thanks to the great DX.
AM: haven’t heard anything extra-continental in North America. Generally, the most distant DX is I’ve heard in the car is in the deep Midwest and Southeast US. I’ve heard the odd Cuban station on my car stereo when driving in Florida, but that’s no big deal. During the daytime, here in Cleveland, I can receive stations from Buffalo and Detroit.
Longwave: never heard anything on the LW band of my pocket radio except Morse code and other kinds of utility signals.
I posted a question a while ago about this. As it turns out, tropospheric ducting isn’t all that rare where I live. As I mentioned in the linked thread, I semi-regularly pick up FM radio stations broadcasting from China, usually Beijing. That’s 1850km away. My mother in law claims to pick up North Korean radio from time to time.
Ironically, when the station I was listening too came back on the air, it started featuring Rush.