On Saturday, 9 NOV, the South Shore version of a "DX Clams" get-together in Plymouth and Duxbury, MA was well attended. The following DXers enjoyed lunch at Wood's Seafood Restaurant on the Plymouth pier: Nick Hall-Patch (VE7DXR) (all the way from BC, Canada !), Chris Black (N1ICP), Vern Brownell (W1VB), Ray Arruda (KB1EVX), Mark Connelly (WA1ION), Marc DeLorenzo, and father-son team Allan Dunn (K1UCY) and John Dunn (N1VPU).
I'd scoped out the Duxbury Beach site on the way down and found the gate locked. So when the group left the restaurant at 2:15 p.m., we headed over to the alternate Duxbury DXpedition site at nearby Powder Point instead. A couple of the DXers went home but there were at least half a dozen of us at the Powder Point site. Boston Area DXer / NRC member Paul McDonough joined us. I set my car up with the rooftop broadband loop phased against active whip, since there wasn't much room for running out wires. DX highlights: Strong mid-latitude Transatlantics started with Saudi Arabia-1521 good at 3 p.m. EST (2000 UTC). The DX was still rolling along when I left at 8 p.m. Spain and North Africa, not surprisingly, packed the loudest signals per watt of transmitter power. Some of the better catches included the Irish station on 981, quite strong, and Turkey-1062, not strong but recognizable as Middle Eastern music. France-1467 and Saudi Arabia- 1521 pushed the S-meter to S9+40, stations such as Mauritania-783, Morocco-1044, and France-1206 weren't far behind. Bigger Boston locals (590, 680, 850, 1030, 1510) run about S9+50 and the NYC skip stations are about S9+40, so that shows how loud some of the foreign DX was at this superb coastal site. Nick Hall-Patch left for his quarters at Woods Hole Oceanographic as Saudi-1521 was reducing WWKB to a barely-discernable background het. I told him that the channel sounded like that up in "Newfie" most nights. The Latin Americans were not too impressive, though I did manage to pull a nice Radio Ideal (Venezuela) ID through WBBR-1130. Bits of Brazil were in the melange on 760 but it was the TA's that were stealing the show. When I got home a bit after 9 p.m. (0200 UTC), the band seemed more auroral: Colombia was slugging WJR-760 and Mauritania-783 appeared to be the only loud TA. The 648 unID "fat carrier" (suspected to be Gambia) is still being noted over Spain. Whatever this may be, its audio remains nearly non-existent despite S-9 strength at times. The Newfie guys probably have this sussed. Also Bruce Conti will be up in Maine before long to take a stab at it. Nick Hall-Patch set up his computerized signal strength recorder (the modern version of Gordon Nelson's Rustrak pen chart recorder) at Woods Hole (Falmouth, MA). It wouldn't surprise me if he published a nice article comparing east coast and west coast transoceanic propagation. I'll have a full log report out in a few days. Chances are good that intelligence from the past week's Cappahayden, Newfoundland effort will soon be filtering into the DX press. Then the Maine BADX thing, Ray Arruda's get-together, antenna articles, etc.: it all boils down lots of DX activity here in the northeast this November. 73 / good DX to all ... Mark Connelly, WA1ION - Billerica, MA, USA ---[Start Commercial]--------------------- Check out new HCDX web site: http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ ---[End Commercial]----------------------- ________________________________________ Hard-Core-DX mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www2.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx http://www.hard-core-dx.com/ _______________________________________________ THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt