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- Subject: LA DX to HI
- From: Mark Connelly <markwa1ion@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 14:48:15 -0500
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Richard E Wood also had lots of Latin American MWDX from his location inland on the eastern side of BIHI, near Hilo I believe. I see zero mention of LA DX among current visitors. 73, Glenn Hauser
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I had the same thought. Beyond obvious Mexicans, Richard had quite a few South Americans in the book including Pacific Coast ones from Chile et al. - ones seldom logged in the east - as well as some of the ones more common on this side of the country (e.g. Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia) that don't seem to have much traction on the US / Canada Mountain and Pacific time zones.
Going another direction, Richard also had a lot of interior Asian DX from India, a bunch of "-stan" countries, and even a scattering of stations from Europe and Africa: difficult routes.
Of course being there all the time has an advantage over vacation visiting. Full size Beverage antennas near the shore didn't hurt either.
His old reports could point to times when looking for far-flung DX such as Argentina, India, and Saudi Arabia may have at least a slight chance of reception.
Serious US / Canada domestic DX would be another worthwhile activity. Of course KFI, KNBR, etc. are the barn-burners but how far east can you go ... on the clears, the regionals, and the graveyard frequencies? There could be some surprises. Newfoundland to Hawaii ... who knows?
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When I was in Hilo last, there was Spanish all across the dial - I always thought: how hard would it be to hear South America in Hawaii?
I think because we hear so little SA DX in WCNA, we don?t know what to listen for.
Colin Newell - Victoria - B.C. CANADA -
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Two things need to happen.
(1) Read Richard's old reports and filter for what stations are still actually active. Splits, of course, are all gone, though there are some stations (like Venezuela 1039.62) far enough off frequency to be "sort of" split. Dates / times of receptions are still useful, especially if you can research what was going on geomagnetically then. This is even true for "dead" station logs since the reports still can point to propagation viability into specific areas at certain times of year / hours of the day.
(2) Capture the band with SDR technology at a variety of times from an hour before sunset onwards. Water in the right directions will definitely help. There are plenty of Latin American experts on the RealDX Yahoogroup and elsewhere to sort out your unIDs. East Coast and Europe based Latin American log reports (from FL, NC, NJ, MA, ME, PEI, NL, UK, Finland, etc.) will highlight a lot of the "usuals" along with network affiliations / parallel MW & SW freq's, slogans, characteristic pips / chimes, music or talk format, and other tidbits of possibly-useful information (advertisers, local politicians / issues, churches, pop culture, and so on).
The fact that "usuals" heard in Europe or NE USA / E Canada aren't all going to be the same as what you get in HI still puts an element of challenge and discovery into the mix. You will hear more South America than on the US West Coast just as more is heard in Newfoundland than on the US East Coast. Big separation from co-channel domestic pests and mostly over-water routes do matter.
Mark Connelly, WA1ION
South Yarmouth, MA
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