Folks,
I didn't DX from our winter home in Oklahoma this past winter and
then was busy with travel and other affairs from the time of our
arrival in the Pacific Northwest (mid-May) untiol just two weeks ago.
I finally got cranked back up and have been DXing TransPacific at
dawn for the past few days. I live on Orcas Island, one of the San
Juan group of US islands that lay in the waters between Vancouver
Island and the mainland of British Columbia. My primary antennas last
year (and probably this) are two Monster EWEs. Thanks to having a
home site covered with 90' Douglas Fir trees, the two EWEs are 70' x
100'. One is pointed at 310 degrees, straight up the inland sea
between Vancouver Island an the mainland... that is the Great Circle
route to the Asian coast.... which I hear fairly well. The other EWE
is pointed due west and looks across the Olympic peninsila and
mountains for 50 miles or so before hitting the open Pacific. I do
not hear DownUnder too well here at home.
Recently, Guy Atkins and I have been Beta testing the upcoming
Wellbrook Phased Array, which looks VERY promising. I'm preparing an
article on the early findings from that Beta testing and I'll be
submitting it in the very near future.
The TP season so far seems to have started a bit better and a bit
earlier than in the last several years and the Chinese stations
(usually the darlings of October) are already showing well amongst
the more common Japanese. So, things are promising on several fronts.
I'll be uploading my comments each morning, along with the rest of
the Pacific Coast dawn crowd and look forward to the general
conversation of the group once again.
John Bryant.
P.S.
Here are my comments from this morning... 1245 to 1345 on September 8:
Sorry that I'm late this morning.... I was "scheduled" to go pick
blackberries right after breakfast... and the DX lasted until
breakfast time, for the first time this season. This is my best
morning so far. I started at 1245, intending to make at least two
leisurely trips up the dial. Things seemed normal and Asian until I
hit 621. That frequency has been teasing me on several of the good
Asian AMs so far, but had never produced real audio. Well, this time
it did and there was a guy talking in RUSSIAN (I'm almost certain.)
Was playing pop music, too. I was shocked, since the only Asian thing
that I've heard on 621 is Heillongjiang PBS in Manchuria. PAL showed
me a Russian station in Kharbarovsk, only 50 kW, vs. the 200kW of
Heillongjiang, but there it was. PAL also showed a scheduled
sign-off at 1300 so I sat on 621 for 15 minutes and MAY have heard an
anthem right before the typical TOA fade. Things came back up some
right after the hour and there seemed to be a Russian talking
briefly, then an OC, with CC underneath.... then the CC dominated
(sure to be H. PBS.) The Russian is completely new for me.
As I moved up the dial, there were Koreans, Chinese and Japanese
everywhere.... a geographically broad opening. It was a bit spotty as
some of the KK and CC regulars weren't doing all that well while
others were. There were a lot of frequencies, much more than usual,
with two audios present. Coming up the dial, the next news worthy
event was hearing the KOREAN in the clear on 702, where 2BL, Sydney
has resided every AM so far this season at about this time. On 810,
also late, San Francisco had faded down and the superb Wellbrook
Array knocked Ephrata, WA in the head and there sat probable
Zheijiang RGD on the central Chinese coast, doing quite well for
about 5 minutes before semi-local Ephrata took back over. That is
the first TP DX that I think that I've ever heard on 810.
909 has also teased me for years here, sitting in the massive slop of
the local Victoria station on 900. The Victoria station has the
broadest slop pattern that I've ever experienced. Never before here
on Orcas have I been able to get any audio out of 909. This morning,
thanks to the quite broad rear null on the Wellbrook, there sat JOCB,
NHK2 Nagoya. I have heard that down at Grayland VERY occasionally,
but never ever here on Orcas.
I guess that the other news is that the high band was back after a 48
hour near-absence... oh, again thanks to the superior S/N ratio of
the Wellbrook, I heard the NHK2 synchros (3 at 1 kW) for the second
or third time this fall.
Boy, if there was ever an argument for the importance of
Signal-to-Noise Ratio, its comparing my Monster EWE to the rather
diminutive Wellbrook Array. The gain of a loop is roughly
proportional to its included area. The 70' x 100' EWE encloses 7,000
square feet... and that is just considering the above ground portion.
The two Deltas of the Wellbrook include about 400 square feet,
total.... Yet, the Wellbrook is outperforming the EWE every time
(sometimes only by being a bit more intelligible thanks to S/N,
sometimes by quite a bit, thanks to a far superior F/B ratio.)
Well, that is it for today! Come on QCIDX!
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