First of all I must congratulate Neil Kazaross on
his logging of Tahiti-738 and so many stations from
the US West Coast as well.

Last evening (Wed., 10 SEP), I did another mini-Bev on
ground experiment at the salt-marsh site in Rowley, MA.
This time I just used 60 m / 200 ft. of wire instead of
the 152 m / 500 ft. one I'd used a few weeks ago.  A
direct termination of the far end to a copper pipe
immersed in salt water gave about 6 to 10 dB better
front-to-back than if the wire was unterminated.  Even
though the temperature had gone down to a couple of
degrees above freezing the previous night, last night
was milder and the mosquitos and gnats were back in full
force at the site ... ouch !  Largely because of that
I didn't mess around with variable resistance termination
experiments.

The effect of the direct termination on WCAP-980 (due west)
was quite apparent: WCAP fairly clear with just a 981 het
when the far end of the wire wasn't grounded; Algeria-981
pounding the crap out of WCAP when the wire to the ground
rod in the water was attached.

Right out of the chute at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 UTC) arrival
time, there were monster signals, largely on the lower
to middle part of the dial.  Spain, France, Morocco,
Algeria, Egypt, Canaries, and Mauritania were the source
of many of the big blasters, many of which exceeded the
strength of adjacent domestics.  SER Spain on 1080 was
even duking it out with WTIC and Venezuela.  The 612
and 1044 Moroccans were at levels comparable to NYC 50 kW
domestics.  There wasn't much coming in from Northern
Europe or from "deep" Middle East like Kuwait-1548.  I
was hoping for a shot at India-1566, heard twice before
at this QTH.  I'll have to wait for my OCT & NOV trips
out there for that.  Then the insects should be less of
a problem too.

I noted what sounded like a bubble jammer on 1020, mixing
with YVRS & KDKA ... is anyone else hearing this ?

Mark Connelly, WA1ION - Billerica, MA
