[HCDX] Grayland North Saturday report - Oct 16

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Somewhat different conditons this Saturday A.M.
Quick overview - Nick Hall-Patch, one of the
team members at the weekend Grayland WA team
gave me the task of watching conditions
from Southern Vancouver Island for the
sake of comparison.
Vancouver Island is at the South west coast
of British Columbia, some 200 miles north
of the Grayland, Washington receiving site.

This mornings observations do not contain
any formal loggings, just anecdotal observations
on overall band conditions.

>From 1330UTC on, there was fair audio on
the Japanese syncros on 747, 774, and 828Khz,
774 leading the pack in signal strength.
The levels were slightly lower than yesterday,
overall, but there were unusual peaks to S9
on the three at 1350UTC. Audio appeared on
738Khz over the duration and may have been

Korean or Chinese. Korea on 972khz was fairly
steady. There were a couple of huge signals
getting bombarded by side-band splash on frequencies
like 873 and 1053khz (adjacent to locals 900 and 1070)

I tuned out about 1415, some 15 minutes prior to
sunrise. By this time, the big JJ stations on
747, 774 and 828 had switched to what sounded like
Italian... this was much more audible on 774.

I have been medium-waving DXing since 1971
and what alarms me the most about the 'band'
is the appalling lack of broadcast standards
or enforcement of broadcast standards in
Canada and stateside. Overmodulation, power-supply
hum, off frequency operation and just plain crappy
audio on many stations seems to be at epidemic levels.

The only saving grace is the departure from AM to FM
by many North American broadcasters.

In Victoria, B.C. Canada, I am Colin Newell

Receivers: Kenwood R2000, Radio Shack DX150B, DX440
Sony 7600G, Yacht-Boy 400PE
Antennas: 3 and 4 foot Oak frame loops w/ ferrite matching transformers

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