[IRCA] Long Beach Day 2 - still better than home!

[satya@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Hi all:

Things here at the beach were down compared to yesterday - signals weren't
too bad, although no visitors from down-under this morning.  I suspect
that one of my neighbors left something on last night, since noise was a
problem.  Still, it sure beats the urban RF jungle back home!

The big Japanese guns (774, 828, etc.) were in well early (1000 UTC-ish)
and easily copied on a little Ultralight, although they didn't fare as
well as the morning rolled on.  Among things of interest there was an
interesting pile-up on 603 with at least three different stations (KK and
CC from the sound of them).

A language note - I'm only starting to be able to distinguish between
Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and highly recommend that if you come out
for a DXpedition to the West Coast, you spend some time listening to
streamed audio rather than cut your teeth in real time like I am doing.  I
wish I would have done that prior to coming out, but ya live and learn.

Much to the Icom R75's chagrine, I went with only ULR's this morning,
using the Sony 7600GR (in SSB with BFO detuned to produce a 300 hz tone)
as a spotter.  The Sony isn't tremendously sensitive, but if it was
getting a het at all, chances are there was audio to be squeezed out on
the slider or passive loop-augmented ULR.  So, as a spotter, the 7600GR is
fairly reliable go/no-go indicator.

For ergonomics, I had the ULR through a pair of ear buds and the spotter
through a pair of over-the-ear headphones, so I just toggled volume
controls to switch between radios, rather than have two sets of headphones
to take on and off.  A DPDT would allow both radios to be selected to a
single set of phones, so that is a future project.

I also experimented with the Murata e100 slider and the Crate Loop/ULR
combo to see how they did head-to-head.  The Crate Loop delivers all the
signal you could ask for, and using the right orientation (facing or
adjacent) for selectivity allows a stock-filtered ULR to find the
split-frequency station and attenuates the annoying heterodyne.  However,
when things got tough, the Murata filter always won in the end, in that
its narrow selectivity keeps locals at bay more effectively AND almost
always completely removes the heterodyne. The Murata may be somewhat tight
for domestic DX, but as Gary has been preaching, it is indispensible for
TA/TP work.

Kevin S
Bainbridge Island/Long Beach, WA
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