Re: [IRCA] [NRC-AM] Recent DXpedition to Grayland, WA & Florence, OR

[d1028gary@xxxxxxx]

Hi Bill,

<<<   I think it's really hard to 'compare' what Gary's able to hear on 
a small
portable radio with a super cool FSL antenna with what I do via a 
Perseus &
DKAZ.  Somehow I give him several 'bonus points' just for doing what he 
does
LIVE, with cars whoosing by and a few hundred feet above the pounding 
surf while
I'm literally sleeping!  Now that I've been to where Gary did his last 
DXpedition I'm
VERY impressed.  I would not do what he does. I might visit Sea Lion 
Caves down
the road but I would NOT stand out there with a portable radio and a 
FSL and cars
whooshing by at sunrise!   >>>

Thanks very much for your comments! I'm still waiting for the Discovery 
Channel to make me an offer for a new reality TV Show-- "Deadliest DX 
Catch."

73, Gary


-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Whitacre <bw@xxxxxxx>
To: Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America 
<irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: d1028gary <d1028gary@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Tue, Aug 7, 2012 3:12 pm
Subject: Re: [IRCA] [NRC-AM] Recent DXpedition to Grayland, WA & 
Florence, OR



On Aug 7, 2012, at 4:14 PM, Nick Hall-Patch wrote:

> I suspect that the Florence location suffered somewhat from being 
1000 feet
> inland, Gary and Bill.  My limited experience has been that you're 
generally
> better off being right at the coast for the best DX, although Gary's
experience
> seems to point to an advantage to being right at the coast and higher 
up, and
> that phenomenon certainly needs to be looked at more carefully.

That's almost what I blurted out in my original email -- what Gary [and 
others'
research to understand it] may have stumbled upon is the true nature of 
'sea
gain' or 'coastal effect' and that it falls off REALLY rapidly away 
from the
coast whether you're at sea level or elevated.

I think it's really hard to 'compare' what Gary's able to hear on a 
small
portable radio with a super cool FSL antenna with what I do via a 
Perseus &
DKAZ.  Somehow I give him several 'bonus points' just for doing what he 
does
LIVE, with cars whoosing by and a few hundred feet above the pounding 
surf while
I'm literally sleeping!  Now that I've been to where Gary did his last
DXpedition I'm VERY impressed.  I would not do what he does.

I might visit Sea Lion Caves down the road but I would NOT stand out 
there with
a portable radio and a FSL and cars whooshing by at sunrise!  For that 
alone he
deserves a '10' on the Olympics scale.

> There was a research paper done years ago by the BBC, I believe, 
showing the
> "coastal effect" as a wavefront moved from the water to the land, and 
although
> there were peaks in signal strength as one moved inland, their 
location
depended
> on the frequency of the received signal, were compensated for by  
lower signal
> strength in the area between the peaks, and, overall signal strength 
dropped
the
> further inland one went.   I'll look it up again when I'm home; I 
have a vague
> recollection that cliffs might have been incidentally involved, 
though I don't
> think that clifftop vs. seashore was investigated.

I've seen that paper and know some people who had something to do with 
it ...
assuming they're still alive.  It was incorporated, in some fashion, 
into the
Rio 1979 Final Acts where the Region 1 & 3 MW stuff was 
negotiated/allocated.  I
remember once writing a TI-59 'program' to calculate desired and 
undesired
signals along radials using the 'Rio Plan.'  Had to see if changes we 
wanted to
make to VOA MW facilities would affect Rss by more than 0.5 dB -- the 
limit to
having other admins notified!

Blah, blah, blah ... that's when people still gave a hoot about AM and 
HF.  :-(

 

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