Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Weather Radio DXing

I recently built and installed a 1/4 wave vertical antenna for the 2m ham band. I used an aluminium boom from an old TV antenna for a mast; it's not super strong, but it's a light antenna. After trying to think of a way to homebrew a mount, I ended up using this 24" stand off mount to install it on the house under the eves, right outside my shack. I'd say it's up about 20 feet.

I hooked it up to my cheap new scanner, which has a WX button that scans the weather band. I thought it would be fun to listen to the dulcet tones of the NOAA voice synthesiser for a while and log all the NOAA weather stations I could hear. Here's the list with notes:

Call Location Miles Report
KIG60 Mt. Mansfield, VT 27 Full quieting.
WWG50 Burke Mtn., VT 38 Full quieting.
KZZ41 Mt. Washington, NH 59 Mostly quieting, solid copy.
WNG546 Moose Mtn., NH 38 Very little quieting, poor copy.
WXM44 Mt. Ascutney, VT 54 Mostly quieting, good copy.
KSC43 Gore Mtn., NY 86! Full quieting, excellent copy!

There you go, six stations, including one 86 miles away, past the Green Mountains, way over on Gore Mt. in New York! Must be an inversion!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

That is close compared to what I've gotten in the past from here in Moses Lake, WA.
Far away stations (in order from closest to furthest)
* WNG559 in Fossil, OR - 242 km
* WNG560 in John Day, OR - 314 km
* WWG24 in Port Angeles, WA - 326 km
* KXI90 in MONTROSE, CO - 1342 km!!!

N1YWB said...

A lot of it has to do with antenna and location. I'm just using a 1/4 vertical on the side of my house. My HAAT is probably negative. The scanner is probably not that sensitive.

I would expect occasional propagation enhancements like sporadic E, tropo ducting, etc.