Can you get skip barefoot?

[80 meter man]

Yes.

[King Mudduck]

Yes talked to Kansas city for 5 minutes on a bare foot gen lee on channel 28. Also talked to 2 guys in OK city on a bare foot Tram D201A that only did 15 watts. That really blew my mind!!

[BtyMONSTER]

skip is not about power/watts . its about conditions . power does help but if the skip ain't there you ain't talkin' skip .
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[crazytruker]

Yes talked to Kansas city for 5 minutes on a bare foot gen lee on channel 28. Also talked to 2 guys in OK city on a bare foot Tram D201A that only did 15 watts. That really blew my mind!!

Gotta love those Trams. For my 2 cents I once had a 1983 Ford Granda with a 102" whip ball mounted to the rear quarter fender and a Uniden pc 33 stock radio with an Astatic power mic and got a skip contact just as easy as slicing butter with a hot knife.

[fireball894]

Skip was in here and there the last 2 days. It hasnt been all that great lately though. 2 years ago this the west coast was in here just about every day........ now its down south or mexico once in a while......

[poboy309]

skip is not about power/watts . its about conditions . power does help but if the skip ain't there you ain't talkin' skip .
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ohh ok, like what kind of conditions? My friends dad thats really into CB said there hasnt been skip around here in forever

skip is intermittent right now but I've caught skip quite a few times here in IL. conditions for skip should improve soon from what I've read and heard.

[Slim Jim]

there is some truth to that, but you really just have to be in the right place ant the right time. It's been a few weeks ago, but I talked on a barefoot Cobra 142 to Northern California and Oregon within three minutes of each other, and then there was nothing. It's just all about timing and conditions. you can hear the stations out there in DX land very faintly talking...you keep listening and one in particular keeps getting louder and louder until it sounds like they're outside in your driveway, you call out to them and they reply and then a few seconds later they begin to drift out and as fast as they came in, they're gone...

[209 first class]

conditions meaning when the ionosphere becomes magnetically charged and reflects our cb signals back down to the earth far away. yes, skip is sparse lately, but its coming back around. it can be done. 209

[perrym1962]

You can "get" skip on a walkie talkie. As for transmitting to them I have made numerous contacts all over the States and some other countries with a barefooted radio on am. Also it is even easier on ssb.

[BtyMONSTER]

skip is not about power/watts . its about conditions . power does help but if the skip ain't there you ain't talkin' skip .
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ohh ok, like what kind of conditions? My friends dad thats really into CB said there hasnt been skip around here in forever

the conditions described in the link i provided because im too lazy to type that much .

[doctor]

Yep you can get good dx when the propagation is good like Saturday open all day...
You can get descent results with ssb also, with a peaked radio and if your itching to try barefoot, run up to the 475 or 505, 515, 555 frequencies on ssb only and see what barefoot does when the skip is in you will be surprised..

DOCTOR/795

[dud muck]

Can you get skip barefoot running a good antenna?

The original question had the point running a good antenna.

Talking skip certainly is mostly about conditions.
But secondary to that is your antenna system.
often skip at times like now at solar minimum, skip is for short time period coming from a single direction.
If you can point your beam at it, then you have the best chances.

You also want to use horizontal antenna for DX, because a vertical will pick up more local noise.

[209 first class]

barefoot? oh yeah, ive even done it a few times while naked. 209

[Circuit Breaker]

ohh ok, like what kind of conditions? My friends dad thats really into CB said there hasnt been skip around here in forever

Right now, most skip that you will hear will be caused by sporadic E. This is the E layer in the ionosphere becomes charged and begins to reflect radio signals. As the name implies, this is sporadic. You never know when it's going to happen. And, you never know what areas will be affected. It might be open in one area but not in another. People in Southern California might have openings to the east coast but people in Northern California may not have anything.

Another thing that impacts skip is the sun. Right now, we're at the bottom of the solar cycle, which means little to no sunspot activity on the surface of the sun. Sunspots can caused charged particles from the sun to ionize the atmosphere and increase skip potential. In a few years, when the sunspot cycle gets into good swing, skip will become a daily occurrence. A downside to sunspots is CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections). These can wipe out communications altogether...including satellites.

[Circuit Breaker]

You also want to use horizontal antenna for DX, because a vertical will pick up more local noise.

Well, that is yes and no. If the skip is from a sporadic E opening, antenna polarization will make little difference because it tends to get distorted or twisted as the signal propagates. So, what might have started out as a horizontal wave may end up a vertical wave at the receiving end.

[samskip]

It can be done alright...


From SW Wisconsin I talked off a K30 antenna from a galaxy 959 @ 5 watts to central Florida and Texas. A good antenna will certainly help when conditions are there, but you do need the solar gods on your side. I'd suspect by the start of 08' it will slowly start picking up.

I understand for many in this hobby, watts are everything -- It's simply not that important... Conditions and your ANTENNA will help you more than a couple hundred watts.

Watts can make some what marginal differences if you think of them in doubling increments.

If your running 20 watts, for anyone to notice any difference you MUST double your power.

So if your running 500 watts, no one will notice any difference unless you change to 1000 watts. And that doubling should cause your signal to go up 1 s-unit with a gain of 3db. Instead of going the power route you could get a better antenna, typically a beam, that will give you 3db more forward gain and that would be equivelant to doubling your power...

simplified Example....

You run your galaxy @ 50 watts attached to a three element yagi, these usually give you about a 8db forward push it would be equivelant to if you were running a vertical imax 2000 antenna with 120 watts.

But why go the antenna route? Well many stations out there run 1000 watts but can't hear anything. With a high gain antenna you increase your receive capability as well as transmit. Do you want to just babble on and people can hear you, but they can't talk back because your antenna is up to par? ? ? If that is true, then go buy a rat shack base and run a kilo or even an Antron 99.