Sunset in depth
Back to Main Page

(This article first appeared in the September 1981 issue of the DX Probe)

Pine Bluff, Greenville and Denton don’t sound quite as exotic as Nairobi or Kuala Lumpur, but reception of BCB (AM) stations from these cities can be just as rewarding as picking up a distant shortwave outlet from some remote corner of Africa or Asia.

The mode of reception used by DXers to hear these stations and hundreds of others throughout the country is known as Sunset Skip (SSS). Sunset skip is especially attractive because it does not require getting up at 4:00 a.m. or shuffling your schedule. As the name implies, it occurs at sunset, or more precisely, from shortly before to about an hour after local sunset.

Chicago is an excellent location for DXing BCB at sunset because of its northerly location and the angle of the sun at sunset during the fall and winter months, when sunset skip is by far the best. It is possible to log stations from nearly every point in the continental United States, except for the West Coast (stations everywhere from New Hampshire to Arizona have been reported to CADX) but most of the stations heard will be in a wide crescent stretching from East Tennessee and Georgia west to Texas and Oklahoma.

Nearly all stations heard at sunset will be in the U.S. Sunset, with a few exceptions, is not an especially good time to log stations from Canada or foreign countries. (For BCB-DXing purposes, the U.S. and Canada are considered "domestic".)

For the newcomer to sunset skip DXing, a good portable (TRF or GE Superadio) and an up-to-date log will suffice. The more experienced DXer will need a good communications receiver with a loop antenna, and a variety of reference material. An updated NRC Domestic Log, Sunrise/Sunset maps, and a decent road atlas are helpful. Also, the Standard Rate and data Service publications can be useful because they contain maps showing the location of all the radio stations in a given state.

The main targets for the sunset DXer are the 2000-odd stations licensed by the FCC for daytime operation only. These stations operate from local sunrise to sunset.

Casual tuning at or after local sunset will provide some interesting opportunities. In Chicago, local sunset in October is 6:15 p.m. CDT (after the change to CST, local sunset is set at 5:15 p.m.). At this time all of the Chicago area daytime stations will leave the air, as well as stations in most of the rest of the state, western Indiana and Kentucky, west-central Tennessee, Alabama and parts of Mississippi and Florida. With these stations off the air, you have 15 minutes to look for daytime stations in eastern Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and most of Mississippi before they sign-off at 6:30 p.m. After these stations sign-off, watch for stations farther west that sign-off at 6:45 p.m. and so on.

A good place to start looking is the upper end of the band. The two regional channels at the top end, 1590 and 1600 both have a proven track record at sunset. The clear channels, 1550, 1560, 1570 and 1580 all have a lot of targets, with 1580 being the best sunset frequency overall because of a wide range of stations and the lack of a strong dominant clear channel. Depending on the strength of the dominant stations, 1510, 1530 and 1540 can also be good. Other clear channels to try include 730, 800, 900, 1050, 1090, 1110 and 1220.

Good regional frequencies at sunset include: 970, 1260, 1270, 1330, 1350, 1360, 1370, 1410, 1440 and 1460.

The angle of the sun during the fall and winter is important to the success of this mode of DXing. Stations well to the east (and south) of Chicago are on the air later than our local daytime stations, and this increases the number of stations which may be tried for at sunset.

The best months for sunset skip DXing are October, November and December. January and February are usually pretty good, and the first week of March and April and the last week in September can sometimes produce good results. Summer, although sometimes good at sunrise, is generally a waste of time for all but the most inexperienced DXer.

During the first six months of the year (January-June) the first half of the month is better than average for sunset DXing and during the second six months of the year the opposite is true.

The FCC assigns local sunrise and sunset times to each station for each month of the year in 15 minute steps. If a stations sunset on the fifteenth of the month is at 4:41 p.m., then that station will leave the air at 4:45 p.m. for that entire month. In the fall, when the days are getting shorter, sunset comes before this assigned time during the second half of the month. It is during these few minutes, just prior to sign-off, that a distant daytime station can be received.

In October, the longest period of darkness between Chicago and Dallas would be on the last day of the month. In February, the first of the month would offer the longest darkness path.

Of course, conditions vary from day to day and the last day of a fall month might not be the best. In addition, many stations can be received well before sunset if conditions are right.

Besides daytimers, there are two types of stations that will be heard at sunset, full-time stations with power/pattern changes at sunset and "limited-time’ stations.

Most full-time stations (except those on local channels) operate with reduced power and some sort of directional antenna pattern at night. A given station may operate with 5,000 watts into a no-directional antenna during the day and 1,000 watts at night with unfavorable directional pattern. The best time to log these stations would be while it is still on that daytime power but just after sunset, when sunset falls before the stations assigned time to switch to its night facilities. (The method for determining these times is the same as that used for daytime only stations.) The listener will have to be alert enough to ID the station before the switch, because there will be no announcement and the change is typically made in the middle of a song.

Limited-time stations operate on clear channels and are generally allowed to stay on the air until sunset at the station they "protect." Locally, WAIT-820 stays on the air until Dallas-Fort Worth sunset (they protect WBAP) and WJJD-1160 does not sign-off until Salt Lake City sunset (to protect KSL.) Many of these stations have been granted fulltime licenses and in the future will operate with a directional antenna at night rather than a special operating schedule.

The sunset DXer will soon become accustomed to various types of openings and become prepared to exploit them. The most common openings are straight south to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, or southwest into Texas and Oklahoma. Sometimes it is possible to hear stations in the east or southeast well before sunset on clear regional or clear channels. Several interesting loggings from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina and Georgia have been made recently by CADXers.

An extremely rare sunset opening is one which reaches into the northwest from Chicago. If you hear a lot of stations from northeastern Wisconsin, Minnesota or North Dakota be sure to log them because this does not happen very often!

Like sunrise, sunset can be affected by aurora. Sometimes this results in the blanketing of all but the strongest stations but on other occasions it can mean reception of stations that cannot be received under normal conditions. The state that benefits most from aurora is usually Texas. With some 250 BCB stations, Texas is to the BCB DXers what Brazil is to the shortwave listener. Since many regional channels have as many as five or six Texas stations on them, it is not uncommon to hear as many as 30 Texas stations in a single afternoon!

It pays to keep up with what is being heard in CADX and other club bulletins. Make a list of stations reported at sunset and then come up with a target list like the one illustrated above. After a few seasons of sunset DXing it will become increasingly difficult to simply stumble upon a new station; you have to look for a specific station that you believe can be heard. Anyway you look at it, sunset can provide hours of enjoyment and many new stations for you logbook.

January: 7:15 a.m (sunrise) – 4:45 p.m (sunset)
February: 6:45 a.m – 5:15 p.m
March: 6:00 a.m – 6:00 p.m
April: (CST) 5:15 a.m – 6:30 p.m
May: 5:30 a.m – 8:00 p.m
June: 5:15 a.m – 8:30 p.m
July: 5:30 a.m – 8:30 p.m.
August: 6:00 a.m – 7:45 p.m
September: 6:30 a.m – 7:00 p.m
October: (CDT) 7:00 a.m - 6:15 p.m
November: 6:45 a.m – 4:30 p.m
December: 7:15 a.m – 4:15 p.m

Back to Main Page
Back to Top