Re: [IRCA] DUs from Grayland, Thursday July 10: KIWI HEAVEN

[Walter Salmaniw <salmaniw@xxxxxxx>]

John, I'm very envious of you!  I haven't had a chance to go through my Perseus files, but I was there live between 11:45 and 12:15 and I didn't think things were nearly as good as yesterday, where I counted  19 audios between 531 and 1323.  Strongest of the lot was Radio New Zealand on 756 with an 8 signal, but there were more Aussies to be heard for sure than Kiwi stations.  Fiji was also in strong on 639.  I suspect your Olympic mountain argument putting us in the "propagation shadow" may very well be a valid one.  I'm still waiting for Colin to deliver my notch for 1070 so that I can use the proper NZ wire which I'm unable to use so far due to overloading and 1070 images all over the place.  Colin, if you read this, PLEASE!!!  Sure sounds like you had a LOT of fun, though, John....Lucky you!!!!  By the way, loved
your story about the Hoh Rain Forest....know it well driving down to Grayland from Port Angeles!  ........Walt Salmaniw, Victoria


At 10:08 PM 7/10/2008, you wrote:
>Gosh!
>
>The very best morning of Kiwi DX was in March of 1990 when Linda and I were camped in our tiny trailer at a seaside campsite in the Hoh Rain Forest, that soggy temperate rainforest that is trapped between the Pacific Ocean and the massive Olympic Mountains of far NW Washington State. The area gets almost 10 meters a year of rain and it rained HARD, constantly from our early AM arrival. By night fall, we had decided to retreat to the eastern side of the mountains where it was dry, leaving early in the morning. It was so wet that the popular campground was virtually empty and I decided I couldn't possibly put out a serious antenna and DX at dawn.  I decided to hand 15 meters of wire in the tree that we were camped under so that I could listen to Radio Australia at dawn on shortwave, should I awake at my usual pre-dawn hour. I did wake up about an hour before dawn and turned on 9580. After a few minutes, I got curious as to whether there might be at least one or two Big Guns o!
 n MW, so I tuned down there, thank God! It was wall-to-wall DUs and almost all of them were Kiwis. The few Aussies were about what you might expect to hear on less than 50 feet of wire. Most of the Kiwis were at very listenable levels and I was familiar enough with the DU dial, even in those days to play the parallel game to the hilt. Almost twenty years later, slightly more than 50 percent of my Kiwi QSLs came from that morning.... Something like 22 or so (my records are at home.)
>
>This morning was not that good.
>
>But it was the`second best Kiwi morning that I've ever heard. I started 90 minutes before 1220 dawn and immediately noticed that there were quite a few Kiwis about and at elevated levels. There were a few Aussies, at far poorer levels than yesterday and the now-usual few JJs, also down from yesterday.  I really 657//963 was doing the best of the season at 9 and 7 respectively and then I hit 738. Tahiti's carrier was unbelievably strong... more so than most locals except for 810 San Francisco. With almost no modulation, it looked like a tall skinny spike on the display. I could hear a little audio that sounded French... maybe.  Things seemed to switch back and forth on 738. Sometimes when I'd stop by, it sounded/looked as described. At other times, 2NR was there at a fair level.  I think that the Tahiti transmitter may be failing, though I was never listening when if faded or cut out.... It was so strong that I was pretty sure that the propagation was favoring south.



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