While it's not uncommon to read of reports of Sporadic-E openings on the 144 MHz (2m) amateur radio band, it's unusual to hear of reception reports at high frequencies. On the 4th of July 2025, Matthew Sittel in Manhattan, Kansas managed to hear several NOAA weather stations at 162 MHz.
Matthew who is a meteorologist by profession, also listens for unusual reception reports on the VHF bands. This includes reception of the NOAA weather broadcasts at 162 MHz.
Matthew was using an AirSpy HF+ Discovery SDR with SDR# software. The receiving antenna was an MYA1506K 6-element antenna cut to 162 MHz.
The following NOAA broadcasts were heard between 8:53 am to 1:26 pm CDT (Central Daylight Time)
(In order of distance - max to min)
Atlantic City, New Jersey 1182
Sudler Ville, Maryland 1105 miles
Matthew has posted the following video on his YouTube channel...
Analysis... Looking at the distances above, we can conclude that this was a single hop Sporadic-E opening that reached at least as high as 162 MHz.
The NOAA broadcasts use narrow band FM and as far as I know, range from a few watts up to 1-kilowatt in power.
The longest distance reception of 2049 kms is about the maximum for something like a FM signal vis Sporadic-E. We're not talking about reception of something like SSB or FT8 amateur radio signals here which might extend the range out to about 2300kms.
The reception report that's really of interest is the shortest one which is from Ohio at 1189 kms. This suggests that the maximum usable frequency (MUF) at this time may has been a good bit higher in frequency.
There have been reports in the past of Sporadic-E signals reaching above 200 MHz but these are exceptional.
Credits... Thanks for Mike Schaffer, KA3JAW for the background information for this post.
1 comment:
There was a Morrocan analogue TV channel around 162MHz which was very occasionally received in the UK up until it closed around 25 years ago, also a French 819 line TV channel (Ch F5) which no doubt propagated out via Sporadic E(Rennes Ch F5 in N France was a regular tropo signal in S England),closed around 1983.
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