Hi Ray - I'm planning for the Gilbert - West Coast military radio check upcoming for this weekend, Saturday 23 Sept.  

I will be operating a PRC-174 from a field location out this way.  So I ran the VOA propagation prediction for the CA-MD path at 1800Z (11AM PDT, 1400 EDT).  Freq= 18.145 mc.

Variables I entered are SSB, quarter wave verticals at each end, 50 watts (split between 100 W GRC-106 and 20 W PRC-174).  Prediction uses current solar activity.. I find these predictions to be fairly accurate for my purposes...

It does not look good for propagation success: prediction (18 mc brown curve) is less than 5% for an acceptable SNR with those parameters.  See chart.  Other bands not usefully better..

But I guess we try anyway., maybe some mid-west / west coast Mil rock crushers may try also...But otherwise a good excuse to get out in the field..

FYI, Tim

N6CC