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

[d1028gary@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Thanks for your detailed analysis of the limited sunrise (and sunset) enhancement periods available at inland DXing sites, Mark. After suffering through 8 years of thisÂphenomena,Âyour conclusions make perfect sense to me. 
 
Puyallup is probably the west coast version of east coast DXing locations like Concord (NH),ÂWorcester orÂHartford-- offering enough transoceanic DX to give you a sample of what's going on, but not enough to stop you from wishing that you were on an ocean beach (or cliff). 
 
73, Gary 
 
ÂÂ 
<<<ÂÂ 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 



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