One thing I can say about the past few months is that E skip was abundant. I can’t say that about tropo. There hasn’t been any decent tropo up in these parts since, it seems, like forever. But on the evening of September 15th, it finally happened. And it wasn’t the usual down-the-coast type tropo that yields FM DX from New York City, Atlantic City and coastal Maryland. It was the good stuff that comes in from inland states instead.
DX maps was showing a huge red blob from my location to roughly Ohio and Ontario. The notice of that, plus the fact that I saw a reception from another DXer about 70 miles west of me who was receiving DX from Ontario, made me take a look to see what was going on and the first DX I saw turned out to be CKPC 92.1 in Brantford, Ontario, 404 miles west of me. I looked for others in that area but found none. I kept on looking anyway.
Later on I found WFRB 105.3 Frostburg, Maryland (382 mi)coming through with country music (Froggy). Then later another country station on 98.7 which IDed as WOVK in Wheeling, West Virginia. That was my furthest catch of the evening, past that of CKPC, at 424 miles.
Also heard was WQXA 105.7 in York, Pennsylvania. It’s not super distant but WHCN’s HD sideband is there and I needed to use antenna phasing to clear up 105.7. Some Philadelphia stations were strong and, as usual, the New York City FMs were strong and all over the dial.
Usually, on 98.7, I have a semi-local LPFM. This station lost its transmitter site recently and is off the air. But WEPN in New York was there instead and it was strong. I used antenna phasing to eliminate WEPN and hear WOVK instead.
I would love more inland tropo. I hope I see more of this before it gets cold again.