In article .com,
wrote:
Progress!

Thanks go to Telamon for posting a timely message. I grabbed my radio
and went out into the park. Not hard to do, as I live essentially in
one. I walked between 50 and 100 yards into the middle of the park,
sat down on a bench and fired up the radio. I tooled around the 49m
band as Telamon suggested and I'm pleased to report that the results
were extremely encouraging. Not sure why I wasn't having better
results the other night when I was miles away from nowhere...

It's called "space weather". It's been pretty dreadful for the last
week or so and is now much better. For a rather cryptic introduction
listen to WWV at 18 minutes past the hour (45 past for WWVH in Hawaii).

Mark Zenier
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)