All the talk about poor and/or weird propagation got
my curiosity piqued, so I went out to the Rowley, MA
coastal salt-marsh site on Tuesday night from 7:30 to
9:30 p.m. EDT (2330-0130 UTC) to evaluate what DX was
(and was not) coming in.

Conditions were neither wonderful nor terrible during
the session: just unremarkable and on the dull side.
Short skip was very strong: the NYC stations (at about
200 miles) were 20 or more dB stronger than signals
not much farther away (such as Baltimore, Washington,
or Pittsburgh).  Still, by the time it had been dark
for an hour, some of the Great Lakes area stations
(including WJR-760, WTAM-1100, and WWKB-1520) showed
up.  Given this, there was no way that I could
categorize propagation as truly auroral.

Longwave TA's showed well before sunset (pretty much
right after I'd arrived at the site).  France-162 was
strongest; Algeria on 153 & 252 and Morocco on 171 &
207 also had decent signals.  The more northerly Euro's
like UK-198 were harder to find.

The first medium-wave TA with a het was the 1179 Canaries
station, showing up right around 8:15 p.m. EDT / 0015 UTC
sunset.  This time of year, MW TA DX doesn't precede
sunset that much (compared to autumn / winter when DX
up to 3 hours before sunset has been noted).  Once it
started getting dark, a number of TA's were in.  These
were primarily high-band and included Algeria-891,
Spain-1107, Canaries/Spain-1179, France-1206, Spain-1359
(the loudest of the MW bunch), Saudi Arabia-1512,
Kuwait-1548, France-1557, Spain-1575, Ceuta/Spain-1584,
and Spain-1602.

Latin Americans weren't too impressive with just typical
big-guns making it.  These included Turks & Caicos-530,
Grenada-535, Guadeloupe-640, Venezuela-750, Brazil-1100,
and Venezuela-1110.  Two of the more interesting signals
were on/near 1170 after local WFPB went off.  On 1170.0
was a woman in French: this may have been Haiti.  Just
a "tad" higher, at 1170.5 (and splittable using upper
sideband / 1.8 kHz filter) was a Colombian.  A callsign
was given amid the Spanish talk: it could have been oft-
heard HJNW or less common HJKW.

I used the Drake R8A and the Superphaser-2 Phasing
Unit fed by an active whip on top of the car and by a
200 ft. / 60 m east-aimed wire laid out on the dirt
road across the marsh.  One down side to the DX outing
was the aggressive swarms of gnats and other insects
that descended on me whenever I got out of the car
for more than a minute.

My assessment of conditions would certainly have been
more negative if I'd stayed at home.  A lot of the
foreign DX I get at this time of year goes away quickly
as you travel a fairly short distance inland.  DXers
who actually reside near the seashore and can have good
antennas up permanently (and can DX in well-lighted /
spacious house comfort) really have it made.

Mark Connelly, WA1ION
