I hear Hard Drive

I don't think you are too far off on your thinking. It is possible that the band conditions were better than usual at the time the contacts were made. Band conditions are the key to talk long distance. Even more than lots of power.
You basically said it might be possible if both stations had 50 ft towers. Well if my memory serves me correctly, weren't Rabbi and the other driver on a mountain? They were probably a few thousand feet up on the mountain. A much better performance in distance over a 50 ft tower or on level flat land I'm sure.

 

Not a 100% sure but if i remember rabbi was way up north on the 81 and other side was south of him by 70+ mi on same highway but at a much lower altitude.....If anything rabbi had all the advantages of height and counterpoise..Otherside was in a cascadia at a lower altitude runnung a 102" whip on his mirror..
Plus both radips were worked on by same tec..

 

The other driver made it to mile marker 182 on the opposite side and downward slope of a hill without any line of sight and I was on the back side of a hill north of the pilot truck stop at the 256 mile marker. Most drivers are incapable of getting 20 mi west of that exit and still make the trip to that same location. The furthest I ever talked west of that location was mile marker 199 and I was running power and the receiving station was a stock Cobra 29 in a tractor trailer but he was unable to transmit to my location until he got 20 mi closer.

 

11 meters isn't a line of sight signal, that's why your location of being on the backside of the mountain didn't effect your signal reaching the other driver. It's very possible the band conditions were up a little too, but who knows. A proper radio alignment is important too, but as we all know that the antenna system is the biggest part of a great radio station. The first driver using a 102 ft whip to make this long distance contact, proves that theory, plus the height of the mountain also helped.

The second driver you mentioned using a low power cobra 29, probably using a poor antenna system ,(like most trucks today), isn't going to get out very far. Especially compared to using a 70 to 80 watt SSB export radio. The way to test the radios tune theory, would have been swapping your at6666 radio with another at6666 radio fresh from the factory. Doing this radio swap test while the first driver was parked, then see if both radios could still talk to him. That would have been a great test to verify the tech tune vs factory tune theory.

 

Night, ground waves happen a lot with mountians but also a very possible thing that happened is NVIS

 

Well you make a great point, also if NVIS was involved, that would help to lower the noise floor of the signal, which would help with distance.

 

I'm sure the 2sc2999 transistor in my receiver had something to do with it also.

 

maybe, but maybe it is the cell phone that also helped ... hehehehe

 

Lol... Okay you got me there.

 

Ham Operator here, and I will say that ANYTHING over 4 Watts of carrier power is 100% ILLEGAL for CB Radio. This being said, what that "Mud Duck" is using is also illegal as well as him converting a 10 meter HAM Radio for CB use. Adding on top of that an amplifier of any kind is also ILLEGAL. I WILL however agree with you that not bleeding over onto adjacent FREQUENCIES with good clean audio is something we aim for and we never modify our radios for higher modulation or output power. Why should we? Most of our radios will do between 65 and 80W output power by themselves. IF we have amplifiers, we are allowed by FCC Rules and Regulations to run up to 1,500 Watts.