 
  Subj:    quick after-work DX outing 
  Date:    5/1/2003 10:38:41 PM Eastern Standard Time 
  From:    MarkWA1ION 
  To:    am@nrcdxas.org 
 



Here are a few observations from a brief DX outing
on Wednesday, 30 APR, to the salt-marsh site in
Rowley, MA.  Logs are similar to what I had on an
outing there 2 weeks earlier, so I won't present
a detailed listing at this time.  Before sunset
I cruised around in the X-band to look for local
pirates and TIS's.  This is the 1610-1700 layout:
1610 - Maine Turnpike TIS strong & dominant over
two others (probably Dover, NH and Woods Hole,
MA TIS's), 1620 - Spanish: weak, 1630 - weak TIS,
1640 - weak Haitian Creole, 1650 - Logan Airport
TIS: good, 1660 - WWRU R. Unica, NJ fair semi-
skip, 1670 - two stations: weak, 1680 - NJ Indian
music: fair, 1690 - Haitian Creole: fair, 1700 -
Spanish music: weak (possibly Lawrence, MA area
noted previously).  The 1710 NY Jewish station
wasn't noted.  

TA's started showing around 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230
UTC) with the sun still bright.  Longwaver
Algeria-153 was the first one out of the box,
then a bit of Saudi Arabia emerged on 1521
just before their sign-off time.  

At 7 p.m. when WNTN-1550 went off, I looked
for the fairly-common Algerian clandestine there,
but WVAB-VA was topping the channel.  Later
the channel turned into a jumble, though
Kuwait-1548 could be sliced off OK.  Conditions
seemed a bit auroral (though not enough to knock
off all northeastern US & Canadian skip pests).

St. Pierre (1375) was absent: they have probably
gone silent at last.

The CHWO test would have been a bust at Rowley
since WJIB, CHCM, and Latins were at least as
prevalent on 740.

Between 7 and 8 p.m., a number of the usual
southerly route TA big guns were coming in:
Mauritania-783 was the loudest of the bunch;
Canaries on 621, 837, and 1179 did some speaker
rattling too, as did some of the mainland
Spaniards.  You could tell that auroral activity
was challenging higher latitude TA's since usual
blowtorches France-1206 and UK-1089 were bouncing
around rapidly on the S-meter with a sort of 
"underwater effect" on the audio.  There were
a number of Latin Americans, mostly Venezuelans,
that I noted in passing.  

One signal that was truly outstanding was Sao
Paulo, Brazil on 1100.  Fast Portuguese talk
with a lot of Sao Paulo ads boomed forth at
7:47 p.m. EDT.  This Brazilian may be easier
for inland DXers than the Fortaleza stations
(e.g. 620, 690, 760, 1010) that only seemed
to get logged in Maritime Canada, coastal New
England, and eastern Long Island (NY).

The Brazilian on 1000 was briefly atop the pile
on that channel.

The antenna set-up I used this time was a 46 m /
150 ft. wire on the ground (aimed east) phased
against an LM6321-buffer-based homebrew broadband
whip on the roof of the car.  This arrangement
produced effective cardioid pattern nulls,
comparable to what I get with the broadband
loop versus whip set-up.

When I got home, I heard a news report of
visible aurora borealis (seen by someone in
Scituate, MA).  I didn't see it when I was out
at the marsh, but some of its radio effects
were noted.

Mark Connelly, WA1ION - Billerica, MA
 


