My apologies for the delay in this brief report, but I initially thought it wouldn't be worth checking in with comments. However, in light of the near-daily bemoaning of poor DX conditions at the end of October, this may be of interest to some.
Dave Aichelman of Grants Pass, Oregon joined me Sunday, October 30th for three nights DXing from a cabin at Cape Lookout State Park, Oregon. We spent a lot of time experimenting with phased 1-meter Wellbrook loops and 17-foot verticals, both passive and amplified. We also did some casual comparisons of an FSL antenna and Quantum Loops (two different ferrite head sizes). Unfortunately my main laptop crashed early on (appears to be motherboard or CPU failure) and I had to operate the FDM-S2 on a small Asus T100TA hybrid (tablet/laptop). As Chuck Hutton has mentioned, these Atom CPU powered computers can run some SDRs very well; still, I had power issues with an external HD hooked to the Asus. In a pinch I used a fast USB flash drive which worked the best for WAV audio recording without stuttering. Various other technical glitches created a near-perfect storm of equipment problems to a degree I haven't seen in ~15 years of DXpeditions! Sterling DX wasn't to make up for technical woes however. The morning of October 31 had minimal TPs, mostly weak to fair audio from the top tier NHK Japanese stations were found up until sunrise. Tonga and Tahiti were present too, fair to good at times. Post-sunrise there was a nice little DU opening as reception flip-flopped suddenly from Japan/Korea to Australia. 774 and 702 were the strongest DUs. Halloween evening was interesting on shortwave with a number of pirate broadcasters heard. The morning of Nov. 1 was similar to the previous day, but with my technical issues I wasn't able to make a fair assessment. I doubt I missed any noteworthy DX though! The final morning of the 2nd was interesting in that TPs and DUs were mixing on a handful of channels, post-sunrise. All signals seemed to be the commonly heard outlets. The only way to go from this DXpedition is upwards, so hopefully my return to the Oregon coast in 10 days will turn out better. Guy Atkins Puyallup, WA DXing from Cape Lookout State Park, OR _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list IRCA@hard-core-dx.com http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: irca@hard-core-dx.com