FM radio station WMIA in Miami on 93.9 MHz is heard in Chile - 23rd Feb 2023

This reception report is from the 23rd of February 2023 when Pipe, CE3SX / CE3SAD in Santiago, Chile managed to receive the FM radio station WMIA in Miami, Florida on 93.9 MHz. 

The reception took place at 21:41 local time in Chile (22nd Feb) which is 00:41 UTC (23rd Feb). This is at the right time for an evening time Trans-Equatorial Propagation (TEP) opening.

What makes this highly unusual is the distance. It might be normal during an evening TEP opening for  FM radio stations in the north of Columbia to be heard in Chile but this time, the FM radio station was in Florida which is about 2000kms further north. 

In a previous post, I reported on how CE3SX had managed to hear FM radio stations in Jamaica in February of 2022. Florida is an extra 1000kms.

Florida is usually considered to be too far north for TEP propagation so how was the range extended to just under 6,700kms?

The first option that springs to mind was that it was an evening type TEP opening coupling into a tropo duct to the north to extend the opening to Florida. The tropo map above from F5LEN shows some tropo in the area but with the island of Cuba in the way, it's not exactly conclusive.

Is the most southern tip of Florida just close enough for TEP?

Have there been reception reports like this in the past?

And if it's possible on 93.9 MHz, what about 144 MHz from Florida to Chile? Is anyone trying?

Lots of questions...

Link... For more long distance reception reports on the FM band, see my 88-108 MHz page.

FM radio stations from Jamaica heard on 89 MHz & 96 MHz in Chile via TEP

Pipe, CE3SX / CE3SAD in Chile writes to say that he managed to hear two FM radio stations on 89.9 MHz and 96.1 MHz from Jamaica during a TEP opening recently.

CE3SX writes... "Stylz FM 96.1 from Port Antonio and KLAS 89.9 from Kingston, Jamaica heard in Chicureo, Santiago, Chile FF46pr Via Trans-Equatorial Propagation

Date: January 31 and February 01, 2022. Hours: 21.46CEv 00.46 UTC and 22.03CEv 01.03 UTC

Maximum distance: 5,755 km"

As Pipe outlines, the distance is around 5,700kms and is approaching the maximum distance usually associated with Trans-Equatorial Propagation. 

A video clip of the reception is shown below...

Pipe also notes that regular reception TEP signals on the 88-108 MHz band from Columbia and he is using a 7-element Band 2 Yagi as designed by YU7EF.

CE3SX also notes that there are no 144 MHz stations in Columbia (HK) and Jamaica (6Y) to try on the 2m band.

As I outlined in a recent post, there are parallel paths from Brazil and Argentina to the Caribbean on 144 MHz during TEP openings and it's likely that similar paths are there further east from Chile to Columbia, Jamaica and Cuba on 2m.

Links...
1) For more examples of long distance reception reports on 88-108 MHz band, see my Band 2 page.

50 MHz South Pacific Summer Propagation season 2020-2021... by CE3SX

Back in mid-December 2020, I had a post up on the blog about some remarkable openings on 50 MHz between Australia and South America with some contacts were up to 13,000kms in length... https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2020/12/remarkable-13000-km-opening-on-6-metres.html

Pipe CE3SX in Chile has now compiled his own report on the 50 MHz South Pacific Summer Propagation season 2020-2021.

The report covers 6m openings from Chile to Australia & New Zealand from the 8th of December 2020 to the 23rd of January 2021.

In summary, CE3SX in Chile completed 77 QSO's on 50 MHz across the South Pacific... 47 with New Zealand (ZL) which is obviously closer, 26 with Australia (VK) and 4 with the Chatham Islands (ZL7).

64 of the contacts were via the JT65 digital mode, 9 via FT8 and 3 via FT4.

The first contact of the Summer season was to ZL1RS on the 8th of December 2020 which was also the first South America to Oceania 50 MHz contact of the season.

The first contact to Australia was to VK4MA on the 9th of December 2020.

The longest contact was with VK4BLK which was 12,380 kms in length.

The map above shows the locator squares worked by CE3SX on 50 MHz during the 2020-2021 South Pacific Summer Season.

Mode of Propagation???... The maximum distance for one Sporadic-E hop is about 2300 kms. If all of these 10,000 to 12,000km openings were due to multi-hop Sporadic-E then a lot of patches of Sporadic-E had to line up in a row and at the correct distance for it to work.

It has been suggested that part of the propagation path may have been to Polar Mesospheric Summer Echos (PMSE) with electrons gathering around ice crystals.

The full report from Pipe CE3SX can be seen here... https://www.qsl.net/ce3sad/SPSP.html