[IRCA] Ultralight Record + 92 Stations in about 6 hours of DXing

["John H. Bryant" <bjohnorcas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had been planning on waiting until I return to the Northwest in May 
to really "get serious" about Ultralight DXing. However, the upcoming 
Ultralight DX Sprint at the end of the month was just too attractive 
and I got sucked in early.  I decided to lay a foundation for my 
Ultralighting by IDing the dominant on every channel, and easy first 
sub-dominants, with my already beloved SRF-T615. I've decided to work 
mostly in the Unlimited Class of receiver, since I like to fool 
around with antennas and other peripheral equipment, so my first move 
was putting together a Booster Bar, a'la Gil Stacy, from a ferrite 
bar and tuning capacitor that I had laying around the shack. I 
combined that with an under $3.00 kitchen shelf turntable from Wally 
World and was off to the races.

In about 6 hours, spread over three days, I managed to log 92 
stations, just cherry-picking. These ranged from WSB, RVC and Radio 
Reloj to the Southeast, several stations in Mexico D.F. to the South 
and KNX, Los Angeles to the West. Northwest has only yielded KSL so 
far, and Regina Sask. is my most Northerly. WTAM-1100 in Cleveland is 
as far to the NE as I've gotten. Flat out, though, the most fun was 
running barefoot, hand-held, listening to WJR-760 in the clear and 
then flicking my wrist and catching KKZN-760 Denver, also completely 
in the clear. Arm chair copy in both cases and pure magic!

I'm somewhat reluctantly putting in my own logging of XETI-Tempoa, 
Veracruz, Mexico at 250 watts for a new distance record at 250 watts, 
Unlimited Class.  I heard them  before and after 6:00AM local time, 
when they IDed after the Mexican National Anthem.  Their night time 
power is listed at 250 watts. Their daytime power is 10,000 watts! At 
exactly 1000 miles from me, the Veracruz area stations have been old 
friends since my first bout of DXing from Oklahoma in the 
mid-50s.  Even though things from there seem to come in here very 
well, I just gotta have some doubt about 250 watts.  I also managed 
to log XEMF in Monclova on 780 in the WBBM null.  MF is a regular 
visitor here and not a big surprise.  Since there is no previous 
record in the Unlimited Class at 500 watts, my 683 miles will be a 
starting record.

I have the turntable marked in 15 degree increments for DFing 
purposes and have sure found that to be an aid in preliminary 
identification of stations, especially confirming that I'm listening 
to an already logged channel dominant...

Now that I've cherry-picked the dial, the "hard work" begins... great fun!

I lost internet for two days (serious withdrawal symptoms) due to 
equipment failure at the provider, so the latest version of 
Ultralight Firsts and Records will be a day or two late this week.


John B.
Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA
Rcvrs: WiNRADiO 313e, Eton e1, NRD-535(kiwa-mods)
Antennas: 700' NE/SW mini-Bev, Wellbrook Phased Array (pre-production version)

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