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- Subject: Oregon Cliff Booby Prize
- From: d1028gary@xxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 1 May 2014 04:31:07 -0400 (EDT)
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Hello All,
Sometimes DXing failures are so funny that they are almost as memorable as DXing successes.
Three weeks ago on the "Rockwork 4" ocean side cliff I had decided to seek elusive South Pacific DX by setting up at the highly exposed Highway 101 location at 0800 UTC (0100 local time), in the face of a freezing overnight wind chill. I was convinced that such a bizarre strategy was the key to more DU loggings, and was prepared to pay the price in stiff fingers, toes and other appendages.
It seemed like the strategy would pay immediate dividends on the very first frequency (531 kHz), as not only the New Zealand 5 kW Samoan language station 531-PI was received around 0836 UTC with female voice conversation (for the second time during the DXpedition), but also an apparent exotic co-channel along with it http://www.mediafire.com/listen/3iy924gcvacw1yi/531-PI-0836z041114SWP.MP3
DU co-channels with 531-PI are almost always the eastern Australian 5 kW stations, but no Aussie stations had shown up with any strength during the entire DXpedition. Besides, this co-channel had very heavily accented English-- unlike anything that had previously shown up on 531. Maybe the elusive 531-More FM in Alexandra? Its strength was weak, so it took quite a while staying on the frequency (fighting the punishing wind chill the whole time) until 531-PI slowly faded down enough to make sense of the co-channel's speech http://www.mediafire.com/listen/6xcni9k3t8avrsa/530-UnID-TIS-0838z041114SWP.MP3
After hearing this bizarre English weather report multiple times I knew that I had been duped-- this wasn't an exotic DU at all, but some local Oregon TIS station on 530 kHz-- using a heavily accented announcer just to throw off an overly optimistic DU DXer fighting a severe wind chill at 0138 local time on a highly exposed Oregon ocean side cliff! Tuning the frequency down to 530 kHz (at 36 seconds into the MP3 recording, above) confirmed the fiasco.
It wasn't very funny at the time, but now it seems pretty hilarious.
73 and Good DX,
Gary DeBock (in Puyallup, WA, USA)
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