wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:46:18 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

FM is pretty much line of sight. I know that even here in Florida
where there are no real hills FM is tough. On a clear night I can get
the FM station out of Marathon (Fl Keys) but that is across the water
about 100 miles. I start losing the Tampa stations and FT Myers
stations about 70 miles away. There is a dead zone around Venice where
I don't get either of them.
Now if you are talking AM, the clear channel 50KW stations can be
heard 1000 miles away at night. There used to only be a handful of
them but the last time I looked there are a **** load of them. I guess
as AM popularity faded, they started allowing more big ones.
Unfortunately it seems most AM is either sports, news or Spanish.


HD FM range is much less than regular FM.

WBZ in Boston is one of the original clear channel stations. I picked
it up in Denver Colorado at night. Obviously skip.


We were AM DXers when I was a kid ... sort of. I had a 100' long wire
antenna out back, connected to a 5 bottle radio and we could pick up
WLS WBZ and WOWO just about every night. There were only about 5 or 6
clear channel stations then and the ones out west were usually not
available to us. I got started after being in Lake of the Ozarks with
the Teamsters and being introduced to Dick Biondi by the locals. I was
thrilled to get him on my radio in DC. I have picked WLS in my car
driving down I-95 in the middle of the night but it was far from 5X5.


Longest distance I got, was coming back from Keesler AFB and going over
Donner Pass, got the New Orleans AM station that was on my presets. Came
in very well.