This FM DX sSeason Has Been Hit Or Miss

Hello everyone! Sorry for the inactivity here. I usually had IFTTT upload links to new YouTube videos did I make, but I decided not to do that and continue writing here.

In this post, I want to discuss about this year's FMDX season. For new readers here who may not get it, we are talking about distance. In certain conditions, FM radio stations can be heard outside of their intended range when everything is right. There are a lot of propagations that help with this, tropospheric ducting (tropo)), Sporadic E skip, and even meteor scatter, but that can happen anytime of the year that there's meteors. I wanna talk about this year's DX season, because it's been pretty interesting. This season has been hit or miss, because this year seems like we've had less skip than previous time. While we have had some tropo openings at least, there have been less openings of skip. Starting in the end of May, Skip was more present in the south, and everywhere else, but the Midwest. Despite the fact, we had some interesting openings. I've gotten stations from across the state of Ohio and out of state for tropo. I'm in Columbus, so there's a lot of stuff I get. For places in Ohio, I receive places from Mansfield, Wilmington, Chillicothe, Mount Vernon, Sandusky, Marietta, Bellevue, Portsmouth, Dayton, Norwalk, Cleveland, Athens, and I'm sure there's probably more. I also got Wheeling West Virginia as well and other parts of West Virginia. The station that I get out of  Wheeling is WOVK 98.7, Which is a country music format station. I only get that once in a while, if not, I'll usually get something else on 98.7 or nothing. Also, one day I was able to catch 93.7 the dog from the same state. Not sure which city it is from though. The station I got out of Bellevue was 92.1 the Wolf, which I got back sometime in July. Hardly do I ever get anything on 92.1, but I got it that night.

As for sporadic E skip, there wasn't that much activity for that this year, as I said before. Some of it could be because of the last solar storm we had on Mother's Day weekend, which may have had an impact. However, there are days where I was able to encounter a skip opening. The first one I encountered this year was Wednesday night of June 26, then on Saturday morning June 29, and Tuesday, July 9. On Wednesday nights opening, there was a lot of stuff popping up everywhere. In fact, I have an audio recording of me picking up South Dakota Public radio on 88.3, and a couple other stations were coming in and out as well. There were talk stations and everything else coming in. You can listen to the recording here: https://audiopub.site/listen/2d4e06b2-a0da-4165-982b-906df32db6c9?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0TOZEY1mYfEAC9FLh43YxpJp7fe--zmZM3n7Vvgqejo5i44HDkAppe5lA_aem_Wsf7iFDUeu8DvQ7WSy-Meg

All the other stations I couldn't identify because everything was coming all over the place. I also got 101.1 KTTY Which is out of Wyoming. As for the June 29 opening, I can't give out detailed specifics on IDs of stations, but I can tell you on 88.1 AFR talk, there was a Spanish station that was rapidly coming in and out. Nothing much that I can remember of 88.3, but there was some stuff on 88.5. Next I wanna talk about The opening of July 9, there was a rock format station on 95.7, which I did not identify what it was. The only thing I usually get on 95.7 is WHIO news talk out of Dayton, which is pretty good. But it's even better. I was able to find something else there.I got something from 88.3 but it was silent, there was nothing playing. Lastly, there was a little opening two Wednesdays ago, I didn't get too much out of that either. The only thing I got was an 88.3 station that sounded like it was a news talk format.

As of now, there isn't that much skip activity because we're nearing the end of August, and by the fall time skip is dead four FM. However, we still have some decent tropo openings here and there. Skip will be back for a while for December, which should last throughout the beginning of the year, until next summer. When I return back to Florida, I may have to DX again and see what I can get. Last year I was in Naples for Thanksgiving and got Miami and Tampa. Also, since this winter was pretty mild, we had some pretty good openings this year. Nothing impressive like it would be during the spring and summer months, but because this is the second warmest winter yet, I was able to get some stuff. If the fallen winter looks the same for the upcoming year, I'm sure it'll be the same. So far, I haven't gotten Kentucky yet this year, so I hope to get a tropo opening out of there as well, and other nearby states.