Sitting here doing client work at my desk, with my VHF/UHF base station scanning memory channels, I’m hearing a lot of distant repeater stations this morning. On 146.76 MHz, the KE8HR repeater in Detroit came in almost full scale on the S-meter! A couple  minutes later on the same frequency, I copied the W8RXX repeater in Columbus, Ohio. It wasn’t as strong as the Detroit machine but still copyable. On 147.255, I heard the KC8RCI repeater in Republic, Ohio (north-central part of the state) quite clearly. Then, I heard the 443.100 MHz WR8DAR RACES ARES Disaster Assistance Repeater in Northville, Mich. (near Detroit).

It’s somewhat unusual to hear stations this far away on these frequencies, because signals on these frequencies normally travel only in straight lines. Due to the curvature of the earth they’d normally be much higher above the earth hear in Fort Wayne than is my antenna, so I wouldn’t be able to hear them.

But this morning, we’re experiencing a phenomena called, “tropospheric ducting,” It happens most often on summer mornings and evenings when high atmospheric pressure leads to a temperature inversion