I would agree with Tony King that if we are talking barefoot "ultralight" reception that would be true. With external antennas however it was a different story and from Lloyd Clayden's antenna farm on a winter's day in 1960-61 one could cruise the midday band and hear perhaps 15 Aussies on the 1000+ footers and plus we had slung over the hills of Whangaparaoa, North of Auckland, East Coast. A short-lived West Coast installation had stronger signals, but did not work out well for the Asians and Europeans we hoped to improve. And the odour of cow manure from the shed we used put an early end to the experiment. From my home in suburban Auckland with more modest antennas (overlooking the Ocean) Fiji's MW stations were present weakly readable and I recall at least one time receiving the big (50KW) Melbourne ABC stations --- probably from Whangaparaoa --- mid-afternoon. Sydney was 1250 miles; about the same as Nadi and Suva. We were able to do this because 1) the spectrum was much emptier, and 2) it was a simpler era, and we didn't know it could not be done ...We also saw Brisbane Ch 9 TV (around 200 MHz) on tropo reception at least once ... Barry Williams would remember this well enough I would imagine.

In true Ulralight mode one could sit on Mt Maunganui Beach and listen to KFI LA on a hot "9 transistor" Panasonic radio, or better yet, an ordinary car radio --- but we dreamed of what would be possible when Gary got around to building one of his big backyard loops! Mostly though we envied the legendary loggings of the big DXers of the 30's (G)

--- In ultralightdx@..., "Tony King" <tonyzl@...> wrote:

QUOTE: a New Zealand DXer told me that he could hear some Australian AM
stations "across the ditch" around local noon UNQUOTE.

An imaginative Kiwi ! hardly when it is 10.a.m. full daylightin Aus - this
phenomenon has never been reported in NZ. FM YES - with Australian and
Pacific Is FM during our summer.

Regards,

Tony King

Tony Ward VE3NO/ZL1AZV etc