[IRCA] Oregon Beach DXpedition

[d1028gary@xxxxxxx]

Hello All,

Thanks to both Patrick and Tony for the suggestion of Noumea, New Caledonia as the likely French station heard on 666 kHz here in Lincoln City, OR this week. This was never heard during any of my visits to Grayland, and its signal strength was only decent on one out of four days this week.

Another mystery solved this week was the 684 kHz perenially weak station (which was finally IDed as a parallel of the much stronger 639-Radio Fiji One, for my second Fiji logging). A pesky UnID DU (possibly with a foreign language) is mixing almost every morning on 594 kHz with the ABC station, and an Australian talk station is giving 639-Fiji fits on certain mornings, depending upon propagation. 585 kHz apparently has two different DU's mixing-- one with an easy-listening music format, and the other with classic rock (decent MP3's were made of both, at different times). 531 kHz usually has the typical DU mix of competing Aussies (from which I've never heard any actual ID), but the NZ Samoan station has been strangely absent. 

There was a bizarre DU propagation pipeline on Tuesday morning which made both 738-Tahiti and 2NR-Grafton, Australia mix together in a S9+ snarl around 1250, making both stations easily audible on the barefoot Sony SRF-T615 Ultralight. This was the first time I've ever heard two DU's fight it out on a barefoot ULR! The same thing was happening on 639 kHz with Radio Fiji One and the UnID Aussie talk station, both of which were snarling together at around an S8 level.

My listening equipment is very basic-- a modified Tecsun PL-380 DSP Ultralight (with remarkably effective 1 kHz DSP filtering from the stock Si4734 chip) and two newly-designed 7.5" plug-in loopsticks, one for MW, and one for LW. This enables me to chase DX on both bands with one PL-380 (and avoid any TSA hassles). For chasing DU's I'm using a portable 3' PVC tuned passive loop, which is designed to fit in a crammed compact car trunk. Every morning the loop is assembled in total darkness within a couple of minutes, and it provides a very potent DXing boost when inductively coupled to the PL-380. Not counting the ICF-2010 SSB spotting receiver, the total cost of the station is about $125-- about the same as one night's charge here at the Liberty Inn Motel! 

I'll be writing a full DXpedition report (with MP3's and photos) upon our return to Puyallup, WA on Saturday. Thanks again for any help in sorting out the UnID's-- I'm far from a DU expert, and all suggestions are greatly appreciated.

73 and Good DX,
Gary DeBock (in Lincoln City, OR)
           



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