[HCDX] enjoyable DX visit

[Mark Connelly <MarkWA1ION@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday (2 SEP 2000), I stopped in at Vern
Brownell's QTH (W1VB) on Eastward Road in Chatham,
Cape Cod, MA.  Vern has recently become interested
in medium-wave and his house is right on a private
beach: ideal for DX.

Vern had a big gathering of family and friends
over.  His wife Linda was very cordial.

One purpose of my visit was to consult on a good
antenna system for medium-wave DXing.  There's a
reasonable amount of land between the house and
the beach, certainly not enough for a Beverage
but adequate for two 50 m / 160 ft. wires, one
northeast and one southeast.  This is the first
system we rolled out.  I had a phasing unit with
me and I told Vern that by combining the two wires
through the phaser we could generate a good east-
west cardioid pattern that, if set up for the
west null, should give a good 120-degree wide
sweep of DX targets from Europe and the Middle
East on the northern end to Africa and Brazil
on the southern side of the optimum pick-up zone.

It soon became apparent that electrical noise
carried on house wiring was too high in amplitude
- about S8 - for the wire antenna system to work.
The noise could be totally nulled with the
phasing unit, but using phasing for that took
away the real objective: nulling out pesky New
York stations and other unwanted broadcast 
interference from the west.  Sometimes a noise
null might coincide with a "pest" station null,
but more often it didn't.  Maybe you'd even be
nulling desired DX instead.  The results would
just turn out to be a "crap shoot" with little
predictability.

Connecting the two wires through a balun reduced
the noise a little (down to about S5) but that
took the nulling option away unless a third
antenna was introduced.  Vern and I concluded that
even this level of noise was excessive.  We
connected the "beach ends" of the two wires to
change the "vee" into a horizontal triangle.
Signal levels were slightly higher but the mains
noise still wasn't low enough for weak-signal DXing
such as during aurora or during initial (1 hour or
more pre-sunset) Trans-Atlantic fade-ins.  Certainly
it wasn't good enough for 160-m ham DXing where
the signals are orders of magnitude weaker than
the big European medium-wave broadcasters.

I still knew that there were some "tricks of the
trade" that could work.  Even that "mecca" of MW
DXing Cappahayden, Newfoundland had some electrical
noise issues that had to be solved.  One of the
visitors at Vern's mentioned that he used to work
for a power company in Pennsylvania chasing down
sources of electrical interference.  All of us know
that the degree of cooperation that power companies
give to hams and radio listeners can vary greatly.
It is often in the power company's interest to
find and eliminate noise sources, more because
the noise often emanates from their own equipment
that may be in the early stages of a possibly
catastrophic, dangerous, expensive, and service-
interrupting failure.  The threat of FCC intervention
(in these days of a relatively toothless agency) is
probably a secondary concern at best.  

Vern and I went around the house with a transistor
radio to see if the noise peaked up at any single
spot.  The worst of it was at the circuit breaker
box (unfortunately quite close to the ham shack)
and we concluded that the RFI was probably riding
in on the mains from an outside source.  The power
conduits are underground but that didn't seem to
make much difference in the immediate vicinity of
the house.  Perhaps Vern's friend can help him
eventually deal with the power company.

In the mean time, I knew that I had a good chance
to eliminate the noise pick-up by using a balanced
loop antenna at least 15 m / 50 ft. behind the house.
I installed the 1.8 m per side square single-turn
broadband loop (BBL-1) that I use on the roof of
the car during beach DXpeditions.  The loop was
aimed for east-west and positioned about 15 m behind
the house along the border between the lawn and a
low cluster of pitch pines and red cedars just above
the beach.  We turned on the Drake R8A after
deploying the loop and "voila": very low noise.
Weaker daytime groundwave stations were now out
of the "muck".

We still wanted to have another antenna available
to allow nulling of domestic stations to the west.
The wire antenna that we'd installed was too much
of a noise "picker-upper" to be of much benefit.
I knew that a right-angle two loop system: one
aimed northeast and the other southeast would
work very well into a phasing unit adjusted to
knock out westerly stations.  I've used a similar
set-up at other house locations where longwires
were totally useless because of local electrical
noise.

By this time it was about 6 p.m. local (2200 UTC)
and skip was starting to build.  I had the broadband
loop feeding channel 1 of the phasing unit and
the noisy wire arrangement going to channel 2.
For cruising the dial, I left the unit set for
reception from the loop only.  Not surprisingly,
Saudi Arabia - 1521 was the first Trans-Atlantic
"out of the box" with a heterodyne against
WGAM/WWKB/WTHE-1520 at 2210 UTC and good room-
filling audio by 2225.  This is about an hour
before sunset.  Other early arrivers included
Algeria-981 and Libya-1251.  Vern had a R9000
receiver on the other side of the room.  He
brought up good Libya audio on that: just about
as clear as what I had off the loop on the R8A.
I asked him what antenna he had attached to the
R9000: after all it didn't seem to be picking up
much noise.  The antenna was a ham band (VHF,
I think) coax-fed vertical groundplane.  I said
"Let's phase that against the loop".  Noise
problem solved !  We could now DX seriously.
I "walked up" to one NYC station after another
and then "bam !" nulled them into the dirt.
I had Croatia/Spain-1134 louder than "next
door" WBBR-1130.  Morocco-1053 was blasting in
at S9+30 next to a feeble remnant of nulled
WEVD-1050.  We were ready to rock.

Vern and I cruised the dial from 7 to 9 p.m. EDT
(2300 to 0100 UTC).  I didn't write anything
down, but I know we heard, as a minimum, the
following signals: Algeria-549, Spain-585,
Canaries-621, Spain-639, Spain-684, Spain-774,
Egypt-819, Azores-836, Canaries-837, Italy-846,
Spain-855, Egypt-864, Canaries-882, Algeria-891,
UK-909. Spain-918, Spain-954, Spain-972,
Algeria-981 (and later possible Greece),
Spain-999, Canaries-1008, Spain-1026, Morocco-1044,
Spain-1044, Morocco-1053, Spain-1080 (almost
equal to WTIC !), UK-1089, Spain-1107, Spain-1116,
Spain-1125 over Croatia, Spain/Croatia-1134 even
mix ... huge!, Spain-1143, Spain-1152 over
possible Romania, Canaries-1179 slightly over
a big jumble (Sweden?, Greece?, Romania?),
Spain-1197, unID-1206 (low audio), Spain-1215,
UK-1215, Spain-1224, unID-1233 prob. Morocco,
Libya-1251, Spain-1296, Spain-1305, Spain-1359,
Spain-1413, Germany/Algeria-1422, Spain-1485,
unID (Saudi Arabia or Belgium)-1512 in WNRB
slop, Saudi Arabia-1521, Spain-1521, Kuwait-1548,
Algeria-1550, unID-1557 (France ?) in WQEW hash,
Spain-1575, Spain-1584, Spain (EI)-1602 big
(stronger than WUNR/WWRL-1600).

The best signals were in the mid-band (1000 to
1200 kHz) segment.  Low band conditions were
poorer by comparison.

Latin Americans were weak: even RVC-530 wasn't
too good.  

I left a bit after 9 p.m. so Vern could get back
to his guests and I could get over to W. Yarmouth
to sleep before going home early the next morning.
I'd been up since 5 a.m. and would be arising at
the same time on Sunday.

Most likely Vern will have me install a phasing
unit and at least one low-noise loop over at
his place on a subsequent visit.  He told me
that he'd probably join the National Radio Club
soon and that he's likely to show up at some of
our monthly Boston Area DXers meetings in
Lexington, MA.  The mind boggles at the DX
logs that will be possible from Vern's excellent
location on the shore in Chatham, not far from
old (now-deactivated) WCC.  Who knows - maybe a
"delegation" of the Boston Area DXers might show
up down there in the winter for a DXpedition.
They used to go up to Chamberlain, ME for this.

===== 

Mark Connelly - WA1ION - Billerica, MA, USA 
e-mail: MarkWA1ION@xxxxxxxxxx 
homepage: http://members.aol.com/MarkWA1ION/weblink.htm 

===== 






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