Story time...
Well propagation here is crap now that it's the dark time of year for CB skip so it got me thinking about the good old times when skip was at its peak.
This reminded me of a childhood experience which stuck with me when the 11 year solar cycle was at its peak and skip was crazy good.
So here I was with one of my first 4 watt CB radios in my bedroom with a mag mount antenna on top of the roof of my house with no metal under it. I understood little about antennas at the time and figured a car antenna could work fine as a house antenna without the metal roof. I was probably around 13 or 14 y/o.
After a fun day of chatting to people from all over the place I noticed the band started to quiet a little and I started talking shit like most young teens did on CB back then and then released the mic button only to be creeped out by hearing exactly everything I just said almost like a tape recording being transmitted back to me only it was delayed by around 10 seconds.
I thought for sure someone was messing with me so I got back on and asked who was playing back everything I said. Unkeyed and sure enough there was an echo of me again sounding like it was only a mile or so away with good reception.
This kept on for a few minutes until eventually I heard these echoes fade and then the band went completely quiet as skip was then out for the evening.
I always wondered who/what did this as a kid. Aliens? Some freak a few miles away?
Later in my adult life after studying propagation and strange radio phenomenon I now realize it is what is called an LDE (Long Delayed Echo).
Funny part is no one knows for sure to this day what causes it, but there are theories.
Have any of you here ever had this happen on the 11 meter band?
Many years later I am glad I had this experience since now I know how rare of an event it is and to think it happened with as little as 4 watts of power into a little whip antenna setup improperly.
Well propagation here is crap now that it's the dark time of year for CB skip so it got me thinking about the good old times when skip was at its peak.
This reminded me of a childhood experience which stuck with me when the 11 year solar cycle was at its peak and skip was crazy good.
So here I was with one of my first 4 watt CB radios in my bedroom with a mag mount antenna on top of the roof of my house with no metal under it. I understood little about antennas at the time and figured a car antenna could work fine as a house antenna without the metal roof. I was probably around 13 or 14 y/o.
After a fun day of chatting to people from all over the place I noticed the band started to quiet a little and I started talking shit like most young teens did on CB back then and then released the mic button only to be creeped out by hearing exactly everything I just said almost like a tape recording being transmitted back to me only it was delayed by around 10 seconds.
I thought for sure someone was messing with me so I got back on and asked who was playing back everything I said. Unkeyed and sure enough there was an echo of me again sounding like it was only a mile or so away with good reception.
This kept on for a few minutes until eventually I heard these echoes fade and then the band went completely quiet as skip was then out for the evening.
I always wondered who/what did this as a kid. Aliens? Some freak a few miles away?
Later in my adult life after studying propagation and strange radio phenomenon I now realize it is what is called an LDE (Long Delayed Echo).
Funny part is no one knows for sure to this day what causes it, but there are theories.
Have any of you here ever had this happen on the 11 meter band?
Many years later I am glad I had this experience since now I know how rare of an event it is and to think it happened with as little as 4 watts of power into a little whip antenna setup improperly.