Re: [IRCA] Cliffhanger Report

[d1028gary@xxxxxxx]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your 'Cliffhanger DX" report, and I'm happy to read of your success in receiving several DU's with your Eton E1 and C.Crane Twin Ferrite loop antenna. By coincidence, today I arrived here in Cannon Beach (together with my wife and son) for a 7-day visit, and plan to hit the Rockwork 4 cliff starting tomorrow morning.

<<<     738 Weak female speech/singing   >>>

This was most likely Tahiti, although the Australian station 2NR is also possible. Usually the cliff locations (Rockwork and Cape Perpetua) show a very strong preference for Tahiti, at the expense of 2NR.

<<<    1008 Strong carrier   >>>

Newstalk ZB (in New Zealand) had a very strong signal for me at Cape Perpetua last year on this frequency, although the Aussie 4TAB in Brisbane would occasionally mix in with it.

<<<   1503 Very strong signal with a conversation between two women. One was speaking 
English with an AU/NZ accent. The other mostly spoke some unrecognizable (to me) 
language with some English words mixed in. They were talking about life 
insurance.   >>>

Last year I heard both the NZ Radio Sport network and an UnID-DU (probably one of the Aussie stations) on this frequency, so you could have had either one, Brian. NZ's Radio Sport is the usual DU reported here on the west coast, but a conversation about life insurance (unless an advertisement) seems a little out of place for the sports network.

Anyway, Brian, you did great on Rockwork 4 with your E1 and Twin Ferrite loop antenna. Tomorrow I'll be heading there with a 7.5" MW loopstick PL-380, ICF-2010 SSB spotting receiver and new 12" Standard (single-optimized frequency) FSL antenna. Because of this travel laptop and an Edirol R09 recorder, I should be able to upload any exceptional MP3's on the same day as the DXing session.

73, Gary DeBock (on vacation in Cannon Beach, OR) 


-----Original Message-----
From: a1d26764@xxxxxxxxx <ve7aul@xxxxxxxxx>
To: irca <irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sat, Jul 20, 2013 2:13 pm
Subject: [IRCA] Cliffhanger Report


On Tuesday morning I spent the hour before LSR doing some DXing at the Rockwork 
4 site using an Eton E1 with a C. Crane external "twin ferrite" loop. The E1 is 
more of a brick than an ultralight radio so I also had a barefoot Sangean 
DT-400W with me.

Since the loop is not a broadband antenna I had to tune both it and the E1 to 
work my way up and down the band as quickly as possible during what remained of 
the pre-dawn window.

With the E1 I consistently heard:
 738 Weak female speech/singing
1008 Strong carrier
1503 Very strong signal with a conversation between two women. One was speaking 
English with an AU/NZ accent. The other mostly spoke some unrecognizable (to me) 
language with some English words mixed in. They were talking about life 
insurance.

With the barefoot ultralight there was no trace of the 738 signal but 1503 was 
audible though not comprehensible.

Most of my medium-wave time is spent listening for new domestics so I am certain 
that a more experienced 9 kHz spacing listener would have picked out much more 
DX from underneath the overlapping sidebands of the domestics. The site was much 
quieter than my home in an ordinary residential neighbourhood. I heard only two 
things -- broadcasters and static. Unlike at home, there was nothing that 
sounded like man-made interference.

Before leaving home, I worked from the details provided by Guy and Gary to 
locate the Rockwork 4 site in Google Earth and StreetView and then labeled it in 
Google Maps. The night before leaving our hotel in Astoria, I reset one of my 
car's "trip counters" to 0.0 km and then used Google to give me the driving 
distance to the site. That, combined with the time I had previously spent in 
StreetView to know exactly what to expect, worked extremely well for getting me 
to the correct location on time. Relying solely on the maps app in my phone 
would have been clearly inferior because it's GPS feature was unable to update 
my position quickly enough to tell me where to pull off before it was too late.

I had planned on trying out the Cape Perpetua site on Wednesday morning but, 
after two days of driving all over two states on an overly-ambitious tourist 
itinerary, I could not drag myself out of bed that early. Driving past the site 
during full daylight I thought the same techniques would have led me there but 
with a bit more risk of driving past it. For anyone approaching from the north, 
the Rockwork 4 site has the advantage of a few earlier pullouts to act as visual 
cues. I actually pulled into the Rockwork 3 sight first for a quick look around 
and could already see Rockwork 4 ahead of me as soon as I got back on the road. 
Fortunately, at that time of the morning there was very little traffic so I 
could drive more slowly than during the day.

I strongly advise anyone visiting either of these sites to bring full-size 
headphones. There were enough heavy trucks roaring by to make me glad I was not 
trying to listen with speakers or ear buds. The ones fully loaded with logs were 
particularly loud.

Good luck to those of you on the DXpeditions next week.

73,

Brian
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