Re: [IRCA] Second Morning at Grayland + Walt
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Re: [IRCA] Second Morning at Grayland + Walt



Hi, John!  Walt here from outside one of our fishing lodges...doing a bit of "fishin' " myself ;-)  .  The weather is back to being very nice.  Mild and a little sun poking through after yesterday's awful weather.  I woke up before 5 local and dx'd from 11:57 to past 15:00.  I was rather disappointed.  The first hour yielded very little....going to sleep in an extra 30 or 45 minutes tomorrow.  Nothing really gets going until much closer to dawn in these parts it seems.  The Russian LW of course, are the exception, with many of them being present:  153, 180, 189, 227, 234, and 279.  The lower half of the band was a real dud early on, so I switched to the upper half after 20 minutes of hearing very little on the lower half.  The higher medium wave band, and especially the X-band behaves very differently than the bottom half.  It's very much more like the lower SW bands....when nothing is propagating, it's darn quiet!  Lot's of 
Alaskan activity with many nice IDs.  I see that 1330 seems to be on with regular programming.  Heard this at 14:06:  " This is your home for progressive talk, Air America.com".  Presumably KXLJ.

Last night virtually no TA activity....just a few very weak hets.  Hoping for a repeat of last autumn's amazing conditions.

1566 remains fun to listen to.  HLAZ is every bit as strong as last year, but I'm hearing definite cochannel station(s).  Hoping for AIR of course, but this morning sounded much more Chinese around 13:20. Not // to CNR1 at least.  Did hear 3 + 1 TP at 14:00 under HLAZ.   I'm going to keep on trying.  1575 had VOA and at times AFN would overpower them.  1593 was fun with CNR1 and NHK2 both vying for top dog and going back and forth.  1602 had good audio from NHK2, and I wondered whether they have any local IDs.  Today was at 13:20.  

1530, DZME, was very strong at 13:40 with a talk on Flesh eating disease.  I also noted another Filipino on 1494 at 13:48.  

I particularly had fun on 954 which at 12:55 had JOKR and a Chinese station cochannel with English news at 13:00.  Who?  

I've been putting the Perseus and SDR-IQ to good use.  Chuck Hutton asked me a while back if they'll both work on the same laptop....yep!  I can record 800 kHz on the Perseus and an additional 190 on the IQ, both recording to the same 250 GB HD.  I've also learned to back up each day onto a TB HD.  Plenty of action for the next year, I'm sure!  

Also heard 1540 KREA, Honolulu with fair to good reception at 13:37.  

To sneak in a little SW news....No sign of 2368.5 at all.  Radio PMR 12135 was just booming in with English/French/German programming (15 min each) around 15:30.  Also Radio Kuwait on 11990 was also present with lovely English programming around 18:00.

OK, now on to read what others have said, before heading back to the cabin for some fresh Dungeness crab!  
..........Walt.


----- Original Message -----
From: "John H. Bryant" <bjohnorcas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 3:42 pm
Subject: [IRCA] Second Morning at Grayland + Walt
To: irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

> My wife accidently downloaded all of my e-mail yesterday to our 
> home 
> computer, so it was not accessible to me when I hooked up to the 
> WiFi 
> at the local library here.  Later, I called her and she 
> only had time 
> to read me Walter Salmaniw and Dennis Vroom's notes.  
> Argggggh! On a 
> morning that Dennis and I both thought was sub-par, Walt manages 
> to 
> basically hear the Pacific world from his cottage in the Queen 
> Charlottes!!! Way to go Walt!!!  Its no wonder that the 
> formerly 
> secret joint US+ Canada RF listening base was located a couple 
> of 
> miles from Walt's  cottage.  Who me, jealous???  
> I guess there is 
> always greener grass across the fence. ARGH!
> 
> If you have not read my TP ultralight loggings from today 
> elsewhere, 
> they are appended below. Beside those 18, there were at least 
> another 
> couple of dozen TP/DU loggings that I've already heard on an 
> Ultralight or that were too weak to hear on the E100 this 
> morning. 
> All of them were old friends, just about what you would expect 
> as we 
> start the Equinoctial Season. About the only thing remarkable 
> has 
> been the absence of audio from North Korea.  I've seen weak 
> off-channel hets where they normally reside, but nothing even 
> close 
> to audio. Weird, because I'm hearing all around them.  I 
> wonder if 
> they are even shorter of electricity than normal and have turned 
> down 
> the wicks on the transmitters???
> 
> Here are the Ultralight loggings:
> 
> The conditions to Asia were MUCH improved here this morning over 
> yesterday's pedestrian showing, with the exception of North 
> Korea, 
> for some reason. I was at the dial at 1120 UTC (LSR=about 1320). 
> It 
> was pretty much all about China and Japan until exactly LSR, 
> when the 
> Asians faded some and the DUs came up. I pretty well skimmed the 
> cream off Japan yesterday morning, but conditions were so much 
> better 
> this AM, that I received a number of second and even third level 
> Japanese (5 and 10 kW) as well as much of the cream of China. 
> Olympic 
> coverage was widespread, being that our dawn coincides with 
> prime 
> time in East Asia and DU... and the games being located in 
> China. The 
> Olympics coverage made for some strange parallels, with 972 
> running 
> some coverage // to KBS1 and even more unusual, several of the 
> commercial networks in Japan were carrying the same Olympics JJ 
> that 
> NHK1 was carrying. Wow!
> 
> There were bunches of relogs from yesterday, though I tried to 
> concentrate on new` stuff, naturally. The log shows 18 new 
> Ultralight 
> catches and one new country: Marshall Islands.
> 
> 747 JOIB NHK2 Sapporo Japan    8/20/2008 
> 1154   Fem in JJ //828
> 918 CNR2 China   8/20/2008 1123   CC Talk, 
> paralleled later
> 954 JOKR Tokyo Japan    8/20/2008 
> 1240   Olympics in JJ + Commercials
> 981 CNR1 Multiple Sites China    8/20/2008 
> 1125   M+W // 5030
> 1008 JONR Osaka Japan    8/20/2008 
> 1242   Male in JJ
> 1044 CRI JapanSvc Changzhou China    8/20/2008 
> 1127   M in JJ
> 1062 HLKQ Cheongju South Korea    8/20/2008 
> 1245   Olympics in KK //972 (!)
> 1098 MIBC Majuro Marshall Isl's    8/20/2008 
> 1129    Cont. Isl. Music 
> Slight under mod
> 1107 2EA Sydney Australia    8/20/2008 
> 1350   DU phone interview
> 1179 JOOR Osaka Japan    8/20/2008 
> 1248   M+W in JJ. Hrd on 1178
> 1206 Yangbian RGD Yanji China    8/20/2008 
> 1200   KK Svc. Caught TOH 
> on 1205.96
> 1224 JOJK NHK1 Kanazawa Japan    8/20/2008 
> 1309   Olympics in JJ //594
> 1269 HBC Synch Obihiro ? Japan    8/20/2008 
> 1137   Olympics in JJ //1287
> 1377 CNR1 Shijiazhuang? China    8/20/2008 
> 1200   Olympics in CC //5030
> 1440 JOWF Sapporo Japan    8/20/2008 
> 1321   Completely on top at dawn! JJ talk
> 1503 JOUK NHK1 Akita Japan    8/20/2008 
> 1140   Olympics in JJ //594//1287!!
> 1548 4QD Emerald Australia     8/20/2008 
> 1325   Olympics in Aussie
> 1593 CNR1 Changzhou China    8/20/2008 
> 1150   M+W //5030
> 
> Most of the above are at least somewhat regular here at Grayland 
> during the heart of the Fall Season (October) but I'm 
> particularly 
> pleased with the 1269-HBC Synchros, since there are only two: 1 
> kW 
> and Obihiro at 5 kW. I'm also pleased with 1440 JOWF which was 
> totally dominating 1440. Not unheard of here at Grayland, but 
> pleasant all the same.  Also
> 
> I tried the T615 Barefoot several times on signals that were 
> particularly strong (972, 1566), even going outside once.  
> No 
> luck.  Going TP Barefoot is REALLY difficult.
> 
> I'm sort of overjoyed , too, with 1179 and 1269. That Murata 5 
> kHz. 
> is a wonder.  I received those two by off-tuning one 
> kHz.... e.g. 
> when tuned to 1269, the station on 1270 was obliterating a 
> barely 
> audible HBC, but when tuned to 1268, HBC was in the clear. Very 
> nice!  A good filter plus  1 kHz. tuning resolution 
> makes a heck of 
> an ultralight.
> 
> I should note that I discovered a whole class of weak audio that 
> the 
> E100 can't touch. After dawn, in that happy half hour that only 
> occurs at the coast, signal levels of all sort (including noise) 
> drop 
> away with daylight. At the coast, though, some DX hangs on or 
> even 
> returns for about 30 minutes. This morning, the DUs made their 
> only 
> appearance at and after dawn. There were about a dozen of them 
> strong 
> enough that I could at least ID the language; about half, I 
> could 
> follow the programming... all using the 313e.  Only three 
> of these 
> very weak ones could be heard at all on the E100 + Wellbrook.
> 
> The Ultralight loggings of the last two mornings have been an 
> embarrassment of riches.... about double the number that I'd 
> hoped. I 
> think that an awful lot of the success is due to an almost 
> perfect 
> match between the location (very low RF environment so 
> overloading is 
> not an issue and COASTAL) coupled with an excellent little radio 
> that 
> is being driven by a really serious major antenna. Another 
> advantage 
> that I'm enjoying is DXing at a site and season that I have done 
> for 
> 18 seasons and being particularly up to speed on the band due to 
> the 
> early appearance of Asians this summer at my home location. 
> Finally, 
> it is a distinct advantage to be able to DX several days in a 
> row, 
> unlike many of my NW colleagues who are not yet in the 
> "post-employment years."
> 
> Speaking of days in a row ... I've two morning to add to my now 
> 72 
> Ultralight TP loggings this season.
> 
> John Bryant
> Grayland 2008.8
> WinRadio 313e + Ultralights
> Wellbrook Phased Array
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