[IRCA] Some gratifying Eastern catches (November 2nd)

[Brian Rachford <azswdxing@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I can't compete with all of the interesting TA, TP, DU, etc., catches
reported here, but I had an excellent cross-country evening.  This got a
little long; I'll probably write up something even longer for my blog with
recordings.

(This is with a $10 RTL-SDR dongle, Ham It Up upconverter, 6-foot-diagonal
6-turn wooden-frame loop on a camera tripod, sitting on a ground-level
patio with my laptop.)

I did a bit of graveyard work as it was getting dark (local sunset was
5:34pm/0034UT) and managed one new catch:
1240 KFBC, Cheyenne WY, weak at 6:27pm, 700W, call (new), 617 miles
This was at the end of a Denver Broncos football game that KFBC carries.

After another hour of the usual frustrations of graveyarding, I ended up on
1060 with the loop aligned roughly N-S and heard the call for CKMX, "Comedy
1060" out of Calgary at.  That's a frequent catch, but the first time I've
actually heard the call letters, so I was able to upgrade the "Best" column
in my spreadsheet from "Slogan" to "Call".  Then I rotated around to
WSW-ENE a few minutes later.

I was barely making out a weather forecast at 7:45pm (0245UT), and was
pretty sure I would get a new station if they gave a call given the
orientation of the loop.  But, as with most of the east coast
not-quite-clear-channel-anymore frequencies, there are stations out here
that I should be able to get sometimes, and most of the time the audible
signal was an unknown SS music station. Thus, I was quite surprised at the
call letters:
1060 KYW, Philadelphia PA, weak at 7:45pm, 50000W, call (new), 2067 miles
And, I was recording!  Except I wasn't, because of a software issue that I
won't explain.   But, I stuck with it and was finally able to get a
recording of the call letters shortly after 8pm.
This shatters my overland distance record by almost 500 miles (WLW - 1584
miles) and it was nice to pick up another 3-letter call.

That was promising, so I went to 1020 and sure enough, after 30 minutes of
effort, through presumed KTNQ and KCKN (both SS):
1020 KDKA, Pittsburgh PA, weak at 8:33pm, 50000W, call (new), 1820 miles
This was probably a slightly better catch, even given the favorable
nighttime patterns of KTNQ and KCKN.  I've been rather disappointed at
times with distant reception (or lack thereof), but this was a very
encouraging night.

(I didn't keep particularly good logs when I was a teen in Iowa the last
time I was doing consistent DXing, but I tended to do a better job with
longer distance catches.  Thus, these are not my first lifetime logs of KYW
and KDKA.)

Brian Rachford - Prescott, AZ
azswdxing@xxxxxxxxx
http://azswdxing.wordpress.com/
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