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Re: [IRCA] Puyallup, WA TP Carrier for 11-25

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East Coast version, of course, is sunset enhancement.


Over better than 50 years of DXing including "somewhat inland" (5 to 25 miles to shore) locations and right-on-the-beach (or salt-marsh) sites, the sunset enhancement usually runs for a good hour at the shore whereas it's more like 15-30 minutes inland.  Shore sites can have TA's up to 4 hours pre-sunset, at least in the case of mega-blasters like the 1521 Saudi.  A fairly active band with even mid-level 10 kW Spain etc. by 2 hours pre-sunset in autumn / winter is pretty much par for the course at the typical MA shore DX sites in Rowley, Rockport, Scituate, Duxbury, Orleans, Eastham, etc.  Go a few miles inland and maybe an hour pre-sunset your bigger boomers from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa are just coming up out of the noise / slop.


If the inland site has some altitude above average terrain in the desired direction and/or the antenna is elevated, you do get some improvement, perhaps more so on the upper end of the band than below 1 MHz.  Things won't get to "beach quality" but seriously big and directive antennas on a hill or mountain will get you part way there.


So I'd say that what Gary sees at sunrise is fairly similar to what DXers in MA, NJ, etc. would be seeing at sunset in overall operation (though "backwards" chronologically).


In all cases, part of the enhancement is that there are ionospheric tilts that enable chordal / ducted modes reducing some of the lossy reflection points.  Additionally, when areas opposite the DX direction go into daylight, interference is decreased.


I also DX'ed in Ireland in 1977 and got to experience sunrise enhancement (a la US West Coast).  In the middle of the evening there, attempts at hearing Boston on 850 were badly hacked by super-loud Spain 854 (now 855).  But as dawn broke, Spain weakened and Boston came sailing in "Q-5, S-9" as in this recording from an unassisted Realistic 12-655 TRF:
http://chowdanet.com/markc/dx_audio/WHDH_850_heard_in_Ireland_1977.mp3
 
This was from Ireland's west coast.  In that area I visited Sligo, Galway, Westport, and Clifden.  US stations came in substantially better on that side of the country than around Dublin on the eastern side.  No surprise there.
 
Mark Connelly, WA1ION
South Yarmouth, MA


<<
<<<?? Are you not experiencing sunrise enhancement at your location? ? Most of 
your receptions cease at 1500UT, but both here and in Victoria, that seems 
to often be when things start to move.?? >>> 
? 
Over a period of about 8 years it has become pretty obvious that the sunrise enhancements in Puyallup are of much shorter duration than the ones enjoyed in Victoria (or at ocean coast DXpedition sites), often wrapping up as much as an hour earlier. This phenomena can't be completely explained away by the difference in Ultralight radios and table receivers, since when the larger FSL antennas?are combined with?Ultralight radios the combination?generally compares quite?well?in single-frequency sensitivity with?Perseus-SDR receivers and broadband loops, as demonstrated in side-by-side comparisons at the ocean cliff sites.?On Sunday and Monday morning?(when 1593-CNR1 was unusually strong) peak propagation?was enjoyed around 1505 here, and collapsed quite dramatically by 1520. It's probably one of the quirks in living in a mediocre inland location, surrounded?by tall hills on three sides.???? 
? 
73, Gary 
>>

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