either somebody was just fucking with me or I was talking to a dude like 400mi away on UHF
he claimed it's tropospheric ducting and he'd been hearing guys from like 100mi south of me earlier.
I am skeptical, but reception does seem weird today.. crystal clear signal from a repeater a few towns over that I didn't think I should be able to hear well, and a lot more weak signals than I'm used to during my few days scanning the channels in question so far :shrug_akko: