Rewatching Contact. Ellie's maps of contacts in the first scene makes no sense. Frankly it looks lik

Written: August 20, 2025

Rewatching Contact. Ellie's maps of contacts in the first scene makes no sense. Frankly it looks like Ellie's first day on the radio.
She has locals stretching out for hundreds of miles, and now a skip contact to Florida. In reality while calling CQ, you have locals out about 20-30 miles, then BECAUSE THE EARTH ISNT FLAT you "shoot skip". Your signal is reflected back to the ground by radiation layers in the upper atmosphere. now before you say "I talked on a radio across 100 miles", yes, there are all sort of ground wave things, repeaters, all sort of other ways to make those mid country contacts, but on her radio with the evidence I see, no one hired an Elmer to give some advice on that map of lies.
Also, to get excited about a Florida contact. That poor kid really needs to set her heights higher and I blame her father for being too soft. Kid, blow "Florida man off the wire, tell him frequency in use and see if you can grab a couple islands..." trust me Central Florida is always standing by, that state must be a wash of antennas in the swamps as often as I talk to Central Florida.
Lastly, I have never seen anyone call CQ, then move and call CQ again. If that is really how you wanna do it, you better be doing super small moves so you can her them QSL back (off frequency). She didn't seem to have any sort of broadband analyzers to help her find folks, so she is like a moving target to people that can see the whole band and might wanna reply to a CQ from someone.
This kid, she ain't ever going to Contact anyone like she is going.