Coast to Coast: Medium Wave Reception Enhanced by Geography

One Person's Experience on Medium Wave DXpeditions to Grayland, WA and Lubec, ME Over the Past 5 Years

Bill Whitacre

bw@his.com

Special Thanks to:

My wife who tolerates the crazy ways I pursue my crazy hobbies
Guy Atkins who taught me nearly everything I really needed to know about a DXpedition on my first trip out - February 2010
Neil 'Kaz' Kazaross is a fountain of knowledge and continuing source of ideas for new antennas

Warning: this presentation contains URLs

But you only need to write down one of them.
The whole presentation, including sounds, is available at:
http://realmonitor.com/swlfest-present-2015

Why DXpeditions?

Get closer to the DX - and nature
Get away from local noise at home
Try out antennas you have no room for at home
Hang out with others who know a lot more about DXing than you do
Do things you could never get away with at home - eat, drink, nap, etc.

Go by yourself or with a group

Deja Vu Dxpedition, near Yachats, OR l-r - Vlad Titarev, Guy Atkins, Bruce Portzer, Chuck Hutton, Victor Goonetilleke, Mauno Ritola, Bill Whitacre, Neil Kazaross

View of Campobello Island [Canada] from Quoddy House, near Lubec, ME

What I Take [or have in storage nearby]

Radio stuff

Perseus hardware & software - many other options
CPU with Win7 - I use a MacBook with Bootcamp

Antenna stuff

masts - 23' telescoping fiberglass - KittyHawkKites.com
coax - 200' precut lengths with BNC connectors - L-com
antenna wire - #20 or #22 standed, insulated - BulkWire.com
4' fiberglass step-in electric fence posts - Kencove.com

Other software - Mestor, DX Atlas, RecAll Pro [Total Recorder Pro], etc.
Other equipment - phaser, coax switch, connectors, power strip, 300' tape measure, etc.

Before You Go

Have an idea what antennas you'll use and where you'll erect them - Googlemaps + a drawing program
Know what you might be hearing and when you should be listening/recording

Sunrise/sunset times
Recent loggings by others

Know what you'll be nulling - fmscan.org
Bring reference material - you may not have reliable internet access on-site

WRTH
NRC Log
'master logs'

Where to put the antenna

Grayland Motel 'back 40' Googlemap base layer with antenna stuff 'drawn' on top

Did someone say antenna?

BOG - Beverage-on-the-ground

Needs to be long - at least 1000 ' - and straight to work well
Bi-directional 'figure 8' pattern unless terminated
Terminating properly can be difficult - 'good' ground & long walks to change Rt

Flags, super-loops, etc.

Mark Connelly's website: http://www.qsl.net/wa1ion/

need to be terminated with proper Rt value
need to be 'matched' to transmission line - 9:1 for coax

Phased arrays

Wellbrook 2 or 4 element delta

http://www.wellbrook.uk.com/reviews/WellbrookPhasedArray.pdf

DKAZ - double-KAZ

http://www.durenberger.com/documents/DKAZ070314.pdf

Cardioid

A stock cardioid pattern

128' DKAZ @ 1 MHz

140' DKAZ

Some general lingo

TA - trans-Atlantic
TP - trans-Pacific
DU - 'down under' - Australia, New Zealand, Oceania
TOH - top of hour - when most stations ID

Warning from Guy Atkins - "Not all DX happens at the top of the hour."

SOL - a 'bad day at the beach' - antenna blows down, propagation sucks ... even a bad day DXing is better than a good day at the office

A few things the same and different

Same

Need to ID languages

Japanese, Chinese, Korean and others in Grayland
Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Persian and others in Lubec

Dodging domestic splatter on 'split' 9 kHz channels
Want antenna that kills domestic stuff 'behind' you and enhances DX stuff in front

Different

TAs closer and more powerful than TPs & DUs
DX focused on a few hours in the AM in Grayland, goes on all night in Lubec

Exception - Pacific Islands - follow the terminator

Waterfalls from Grayland and QH

Waterfall graph from Grayland, WA - 1500utc, Feb. 2013

Waterfall graph from Quoddy House
1900utc, Dec. 2012

Grayland Motel & Cottages - The View

Grayland Motel & Cottages - Summary

When to go

Three distinct seasons

Fall/Spring - TP+du - Japan, Korea, China, etc.
mid-Summer - DU - Australia, New Zealand, Oceania

When to listen

Morning - pre/post sunrise enhancement
Evening onwards as sunset moves across Pacific

What you might hear

things you might hear in Grayland

Quoddy House [QH] - Lubec, Maine

When to go

Fall - TAs
Summer - LatAms

When to listen

From early PM 'til dawn!

What you might hear

things you might hear at QH

Resources

Bill Whitacre's DXpeditions - Grayland, Quoddy House, Bay House and others

http://realmonitor.com/log_counts.php

Bruce Conti's DXpeditions - mostly east coast of U.S. and Canada

http://www.bamlog.com/#Section5

Newfoundland and MANY other DXpeditions

http://www.dxing.info/dxpeditions/

LBI [Long Beach Island] DXpeditions - Ship Bottom, NJ

http://www.radiodxing.com/

Azimuth to anywhere ... that has an airport

http://www.gcmap.com

Listing of stations & azimuths

http://fmscan.org

SWLFest 2015

Coast to Coast • February 27, 2015