[IRCA] Kauai Island AM-DXing.. Know Before You Go (Part Two)

[Gary DeBock <d1028gary@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

     The Asian propagation to Kauai Island during the sunrise sessions was like having constant exposure to the best possible TP-DXing signals that ever show up on west coast ocean beaches-- except that far more of Asia is in play. Big gun Middle East stations like 702-BBC (in Oman) can show up at decent strength, and not too many TP-DXers have familiarity with Arabic. Stations like 918-Cambodia which are rare DX on the west coast often thunder in at S9, and by necessity a DXer quickly learns the Vietnam parallel frequencies for its various networks. The Chinese propaganda blasters on 666, 783 and 909 pound in like locals, and a DXer needs to wait out their sign off times in order to receive anything exotic on their frequencies. The entire situation is a crash course in surviving and thriving in the middle of nonstop exceptional propagation, which can easily overload your abilities to sort out languages, stations and programming. Depending on your TP-DXing experience, you will either find this situation thrilling or bewildering. 

     If you have extensive TP-DXing experience on west coast ocean beaches you will probably feel like you are on Cloud Nine, but without this experience you will probably wonder where to start. The usual Asian big guns on 594, 747, 774 and 972 are either buried in Honolulu splatter or have trouble holding down their frequencies. Language recognition of Chinese, Korean and Japanese becomes crucial in sorting out unfamiliar stations, and at least basic recognition of Vietnamese, Thai and Taiwanese is helpful. In addition, knowledge of exotic station frequencies is essential before a DXer can hope to track these exotic stations down. Many exotic station frequencies (like 576, 594, 657, 693 and others) are jumbled with Honolulu splatter, and you need to know which ones are not (702, 729, 918 etc.).The amount of TP-DXing experience that you can bring to the island is directly related to the results that you can expect from DXing on the island. Fortunately, because of two previous Hawaii trips and an April visit to the Cook Islands, I was able to track down some thrilling TP-DX on Kauai-- 693-Bangladesh, 702-BBC (Oman), 729-Myanmar, 918-Cambodia, plus Vietnam stations on 675, 702, 711 and 729. An S9-level 800-Radio Transmundial jumped over to 801 during an evening session without any effort on my part. File review is continuing, though, and more exotic Asian stations may still show up.

     Hawaiian station splatter is a major issue in Kauai, but depending upon the location of these pests, their signals may taper off just before TP propagation collapses (around 1705 in November). On my last session I was able to finally track down the 1000 kW Asian big gun 693-Bangladesh through wicked 690-KHNR (Honolulu) spatter, probably because the pest was farther into daylight than my more westerly Kauai location. The Hawaii pests on Maui and the Big Island also display the same behavior.

     Propagation slowdowns on the west coast seem to be fairly irrelevant in Hawaii, with the only difference being S9 Australian and NZ signals showing up in the null of the S9 Asians. During regular sessions the big gun ANZ stations are usually around at S5 levels in the null of the Asians, but I didn't really go after the DU's during the Kauai trip. The Pacific island exotic stations on 540, 621, 846, 1017, 1098 and 1440 were all at S9 levels about 2 hours after local sunset, but once again the North and South American transoceanic DX stations were turning their frequencies into a pretty wild fiasco. Originally it seemed like a great idea to have a straight salt water shot to all these areas, but be careful what you wish for--  you just might get it :-)

(TO BE CONTINUED)

    
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