[HCDX] DXcellent Adventure 2000

[Mark Connelly <MarkWA1ION@xxxxxxxxxx>]

"Newfie 2000": Another Excellent Adventure - Mark Connelly, WA1ION

>From 26 to 29 October, 2000 I had the good fortune to attend the ninth
Newfoundland DXpedition.  This is the fifth one of these East Coast
"DXtravaganzas" I've gone to; the previous ones were 1991, 1993, 1995, and
1998.  The trip up there was routine: this was a good thing when you
consider that on my last journey Air Canada had managed to lose important
luggage for a day.   The weather was occasionally rainy when I started my
drive down Route 10 to Cappahayden around sundown.  As things turned out,
this was about as good as the weather would be.  Normal en-route
dial-scanning on the car radio revealed reasonably good conditions to
northern Europe with "in your face" signals from Sweden, Norway,
Russia-Kaliningrad, and others in the Baltic region.  I was swapping between
Trans-Atlantic DXing, checking easily-heard WCBS-880 for stock reports
following the "Nortel plunge", and listening to the very enjoyable
"Newfoundland music" format on CJYQ-930.  

When I arrived at the DX Inn in Cappahayden that Thursday evening, I was
greeted by local DXpedition host Jean Burnell and visiting US DXers Neil
Kazaross and Jim Renfrew (our esteemed NRC IDXD editor).  It was great to
renew acquaintances with everyone and to be brought up to date on what had
been heard so far.  They mentioned that Canadian DXer John Fisher had been
there earlier in the week.  The "receiver shack" room was all set up with
two long tables that provided four operating positions.  It wasn't long
before I set up my "junk" next to Jim Renfrew's position and started
sweeping the band.  The two main "workhorse" antennas, the 1 km Brazil-Bev
and the 500 m Euro-Bev were available, so I ran these to the inputs of my
phasing unit.  Sometimes I used a third Beverage, one of approximately 500 m
that ran at a bearing 10 or 20 degrees more easterly of the Brazil-getter:
this antenna could provide somewhat better African coverage than either of
the other wires.  Jean also had a K9AY antenna which he often had hooked to
his receiving gear.  Friday evening's DX (going into Saturday morning)
included many huge TA's including a drifty Syrian on 831.5 and the new
"Mega" Germans on 576 and 1575.  Neil said "I'm going to get Turkmenistan on
279".  This distant longwaver had not been previously logged.  Right on
time, Turkmenistan-279 showed up at sign-on, parallel to its 5015 kHz
shortwave outlet.  We then requested Neil to declare that he was going to
hear several other signals of substantially greater difficulty (Nepal,
Saturn, etc.) in the "belief" that he had some magical powers with the
ionospheric gods.

On Friday morning, Neil and I went out to do a bit of repositioning of the
African antenna.  The Lawlor's black Labrador retriever had great fun
playing fetch with us with some of the wooden stakes that we'd brought out
there for attaching strings to guy the Beverage support poles.  Jean and Jim
joined us to take a ride down to Trepassey for lunch.  The fish plate I had
was excellent, as always.  The lunch also provided for a lot of good
conversation that covered many common interests in and out of the radio
hobby.  As I attend more of these DXpeditions, I find that the camaraderie
is even more valuable than the sounds that come through the headphones from
faraway stations.  The whole Newfoundland DXpedition experience is much more
fulfilling than any of the many solitary DX sessions I do while sitting out
in the car at a beach or pier somewhere.

Radios were fired up Friday afternoon just before 1800 UTC.  Back in
Massachusetts, the Trans-Atlantic channels seldom have more than two
stations competing for dominance.  The openings there are usually strongly
dominated by signals from Spain, Portugal, France, Morocco, Algeria, Libya,
Mauritania, the Canaries, and the Azores.  Sometimes a good run towards the
Middle East develops.  British/Irish stations and the other big northern
Europeans (e.g. 1314, 1386, 1422) can be loud, but they're not consistent on
a nightly basis.  Eastern Europeans are usually poorly represented for the
kind of power some of them are running.  Something with 500 kW from Russia
is, at best, on par with something with 5 kW from Spain on the same channel.
Generally the more northerly stuff doesn't compete with Iberia / North
Africa until an hour or more after sunset.  

In Newfoundland, DX is a bit different.  The first signals that come in well
before sunset are apt to be Norway-1314, Northern Ireland-1341, and
Kaliningrad-1386 rather than the typical Saudi Arabia-1521 "band opener"
noted pre-sunset at shore sites near home.  At Cappahayden, once the big
guns have been "in" for a while, the other channels fill up with stations. 
Rather than the typical one or two stations per channel noted at home, each
channel can become a maelstrom of wildly-varying dominant stations.  The
pile-ups often consist of 5 or more stations and what's on top one minute
can be hopelessly buried by something else the next.  Central Europe and
Russia can get "hot" and produce signals that blow away usual boomers like
UK-1089.  Expected "pests" from Spain and Morocco can often sound more like
rare DX, deeply submerged below "killer" Russian, Hungarian, Czech, and
Romanian stations.  The Middle East can then come to life and drop Koranic
chanting on top of the Europeans that had been "ruling the roost" moments
earlier.  The ebb and flow on the radio dial was much like the churning,
crashing surf a short distance behind the "DX Inn".  All of this dynamic
vitality and unpredictability in reception conditions produces a level of
excitement not likely to be duplicated by DXing elsewhere.  

A few of that evening's highlights for me included the Iran clandestine on
1539.07, Botswana-909, and Angola-1484.55.  These are all stations that I
think may be audible back in MA on the right night.  One that I doubt I'd
ever hear is one we pulled up on 1233: a 200-watt Belgian normally used as a
traffic information outlet.  When noted at 0120 UTC, it was running an
unlisted broadcast parallel to 1125.  As at home, my main DX activity period
was from two hours before sunset to two hours after sunset.  The
Trans-Atlantics were my main focus.  Even with all the tea I drank, I still
tended to want to go to sleep after 0430 UTC (2 a.m. local).  Jim Renfrew
turned out to be the "main man" for wee-hours DXing after 0600 UTC.  This is
when many of the best deep South American loggings were made: rare catches
from Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and elsewhere.  Neil and Jean
also got into serious South American hunting at times.  High-band Eastern
Brazilians came in a bit before sunset: the huge 1 km wire pointed right at
them glided these signals in by greatly reducing the European splash heard
on the other antennas.  It was cool to hear Brazilians "doing a job on" some
of the Newfoundland stations when the Brazil-Bev was connected.

The rain and wind had got worse by Saturday morning.  By midday, Neil and I
went north to a new seafood restaurant in Cape Broyle, near Ferryland.  I
was served a platter with a large and delectable piece of salmon.  We joined
Jim back at the Inn.  Jean had to go up to St. John's for a few hours.  A
possible strike was looming at Memorial University, his place of employment.
The ever-worsening weather made us cancel a proposed set-up and test of a
Pennant antenna.  Neil is interested in setting up an array of pennants or
K9AY's at his home QTH in the suburbs of Chicago.  I took some pictures to
put on the Web sometime.  

Some DX signals were already rolling in at 1700 UTC.  This was the first
time I'd listened to Greenland on 720 with a decent signal.  Hearing someone
speaking Greenlandic was interesting, even though it sounded like some kind
of a dull local meeting with the acoustics of the basement of a school or
church.  A heterodyne of a 1430 station against the 1431 kHz UK and Italian
stations was noted at a time (1830 UTC) too early to be a domestic.  In a
few minutes it got loud and overwhelmed 1431.  I had been looking on 1431
for Iran parallel to 15084 shortwave: it turned out that the 1430 station
was this Iranian, precisely 1 kHz low of its nominal frequency - seemingly
too accurate a separation to be an accidental drift.  I then found a
reference to this 1430 Iranian in a recent "Medium Wave News" that Jim had
brought.  A little later that evening, back-home local WXKS-1430 faded up. 
It was a memorable and "daft" sounding reception when Iran's Koran
recitation and WXKS's "Music of Your Life" Sinatra nostalgia and Boston
mentions were blending evenly in an incongruous mix on 1430.  That evening
we all enjoyed a good run of Turks with parallel signals on 765, 891, 954,
1017, and 1062.  The new Libyan on 972 had a butt-kickin' signal that I'm
sure would soon make it to one of my DXpedition sites on Cape Cod with
little difficulty.  Madeira-1125 came through well when I couldn't hear the
other ones on 531 and 603.  For music and for general "local flavour", it's
hard to beat the lower-powered British locals.  These came through in great
abundance and spiced up the general entertainment value of the listening
experience.  At home these little stations are at a far greater deficit to
co-channel Spaniards of comparable power, so I don't get to enjoy them the
way I can in Newfoundland.  With domestic DX, I always have fun checking out
how my home locals do at a long distance.  WEEI-850 and WNRB-1510, along
with a couple of Maine stations, were typically the earliest US stations to
build up to a strong signal level about 2000 UTC: better than an hour before
sunset on their end.  This is comparable to the time that big-gun
Trans-Atlantics would start to show at coastal sites in eastern
Massachusetts.  Before signing off, WMEX-1060 bombed in with a
Boston-accented show that made me laugh when I heard the expression
"people's republic of Cambridge" often used by conservative talkshow hosts
and local politicians like Albert "Dapper" O'Neil.  As always, the biggest
US signals were from the Boston and New York City 50 kW blasters; that's
also what I'd noted from Ireland back in 1977.  My Saturday night activity
wound down by about midnight local.  I had to pack up my gear and get a few
hours sleep so I could depart Cappahayden at 5 o'clock on Sunday morning. 

I knew it was going to be a rough ride back to the airport that Sunday
because heavy rain was moving horizontally on 110 km/h wind gusts.  The
normal 1 hour 45 minute ride took 2 hours 30 minutes.  Some excellent
Irish-Newfie tunes on CJYQ soothed me for what would have otherwise be a
harrowing journey in hurricane-like weather from darkness into dim dawn
light. Luckily I reached the airport gate in St. John's on time.  I'd read
(from other's previous experiences) that pilots could negotiate these
conditions ably, though I had my doubts.  I walked to the airport door
feeling like I was in a boxing match with the wind-driven rain and ice
pellets.  The airport, under renovation, had some serious roof leaks: large
plastic trash bins were strategically placed to catch the indoor cascades. 
Take-off at 8.40 a.m. local was remarkably smooth.  Less than two hours
later I was in Halifax: it was raining there as well.  The second flight of
that day got me back to Boston by noon.  I was surprised to be greeted there
by even colder temperatures and snow flurries.  A few people figured I'd
brought the "Great White North" back home with me.  One huge storm system in
the sea south of Nova Scotia covered the entire area from Newfoundland and
Labrador to New England and New York.  Local broadcasters called it a cool
weather version of the tempest that was featured in the 1999 "Perfect Storm"
film.

And so another enjoyable DXpedition goes into the history books.  Jim
Renfrew mentioned having logged 120 countries himself during the DXpedition
so it looks like Jean Burnell will have much material for the Big Report
he's going to assemble after participants prepare their loggings and
human-interest narratives.
  
A good time was had by all.






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