Joel Kolstad wrote:

I'm in Portland, Oregon, USA. Over the weekend I strung a G5RV horizonally
about 15-20' off the ground -- it'll go higher once I have the hardware to
do so, however. It's connected to an Icom IC-745. In general, it's working
in that I can get pretty good reception on, e.g., 20m from the east coast.
However, I don't seem to hear any of the beacon states on 14.1MHz. Should I
be able to? It appears that the US beacon state (W6WX) is somewhere in
California, which seems like it should be plenty close, at least with 100W
(i.e., I should at least be able to here the callsigns and the first dash.)

What you hear depends on the shortwave skip conditions. Very often,
you will be able to hear the East Coast and not hear California.
The ARRL has a new Shortwave Propagation Handbook. Here's some
more information: http://dzabcik.home.texas.net/propagation.html
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp