Aaron, I'm sorry to hear about your less than successful first DXpedition
to Grayland. Yes, I've been in your shoes, struggling with equipment that
I thought was all there, only to find more than one SNAFUs. On a positive
note, you chose the worst time for TP DX. Nick Hall-Patch maintains his DX
Fishbarrel, that I check every morning, and for weeks, there really have
not been any TP signals to speak of, besides perhaps a rare weak audio, so,
don't despair. I guess that had you been on the coast in August to
October, you would have likely heard plenty. Next time, you'll have a trip
under your belt, and I'm sure things will go much more smoothly! 73, and
Happy New Year,....Walt Salmaniw, Victoria, BC
On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 8:57 PM, Aaron Kreider <aaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Over the holidays I spent two days around Hoquiam WA. On the morning of
December 28 I tried to hear some TP MW stations. I setup in the Westhaven
state park (on the WA state coast) along the sidewalk in the main parking
lot. While the Dxing wasn't successful, I did learn a number of things
about preparation and weather.
For starters, setting up an antenna in pitch black on a coast with major
wind gusts is challenging (I started around 6:20 am). Unfortunately the new
500 foot wire that I'd just bought at Home Depot was tangled - so I spent
time trying to untangle it in the dark while a friend held a flashlight.
Ultimately I resorted to cutting it in pieces with the wire cutters and my
antenna ended up being around 200 feet (on the ground) with a short coax
feed to get away from the laptop (a Macbook pro that puts out a ton of RFI
- especially when you use the touchpad).
I used a QS1R powered with a battery pack and a laptop.
There was a lot of wind (maybe 50 mph gusts?), it was relatively cold (45F
- could have been worse), and there was the occasional short rain shower.
I focussed on recording the MW spectrum. Unfortunately either the
laptop shut down to save energy, or the QS1R battery pack was getting weak
- and I lost most of my recording time. So I was left with several minutes
of recordings from 16:10 - 16:50 (sunrise was at 16:02).
I think there might have been problems with some of my connectors, as I
got better shortwave reception using my portable (Degen 1103) connected to
the other end of the antenna. The portable got good reception of the
Australian stations in the 120 meter band (and other stations in the 60
meter band) whereas they were much weaker in the QS1R recording.
The QS1R recording feature is not the greatest. For instance, you cannot
jump to a time - instead you have to replay the entire clip.
Results
While driving earlier in the car I got good reception of 540 CBC
Saskatchewan. Otherwise nothing too spectacular. I only noticed the
faintest traces of any TP stations (558, 1134, etc) . The night before I
heard a very faint het on 738 using my Tecsun PL 880 (with internal
antenna) at Hoquiam.