[HCDX] My first backpack mediumwave miniDXpedition ! (long)

[J999w@xxxxxxx]

First off, many thanks for all the opinions on portable receivers. I settled 
on the Palstar R-30 and quickly found one on eBay ( thanks Rick ! ). At the 
same time, I picked up an old Realistic VSC-1000 portable tape recorder for $10 
also on eBay. 

The more I use it, the more I like the Palstar R-30. I don't notice any front 
end overload on MW with my EWE antennas even during the day (my Icom R71a has 
a little trouble when the locals run day power), and the selectivity with the 
stock filters is more than adequate. My only disappointment is that it's 
quite deaf on LW below 500khz. Hopefully someone will come up with a mod for this.

For portable operation, I wrapped the receiver in bubble wrap leaving the 
front and back panels accessible. The local American Science and Surplus store 
had 4 A-h, 12 volt rechargeable batteries cheap and I'm running one of those 
instead of the internal AAA batteries. The radio plus recorder fit easily inside 
my day pack, leaving plenty of room for full sized headphones and a spool of 
wire. Fully loaded the pack is quite light. Today it weighed 22 lbs because I 
had 700 ft of wire and some water pipe that was to be used as a cable winder.

The goal of tonight's test was more equipment oriented: How long will it take 
to set up? Will the radio get overloaded? Will I freeze my butt off? So I 
only spent 40 minutes listening.  I drove to a large local park about 5 miles 
from home, walked about a half mile to a secluded grassy field, and set up next 
to a tree at the edge of the adjoining woods. Using a rock, I pounded an 18 
inch piece of 1/2 inch water pipe on top of which I had a T fitting with two 6 
inch pieces of pipe that makes a handy place to put the spool of wire. I took 
500 ft of #14 stranded wire with another 200 ft of speaker wire soldered on the 
end (yup, it fit on the spool).

The 700 ft of wire just fit across the field, laying on top of some long 
grass. I could go longer, but it would cross a gravel access road. I tied the near 
end to the tree for fear that some 4wd truck would blast across the field, 
snag the wire, and drag away my radio! I had brought a home-brew matching 
transformer, but it wasn't working, so I just used the high impedance wire clip on 
the radio and that worked fine.

I had no problem at all with overload even with a 5kw directional local 2 
miles up the road that really tears me up at home. I had the wire running towards 
the Caribbean but wasn't hearing any Cubans at all. RVC Turks and Caicos was 
running S9 down on 530khz. Voice of Nevis had a weak carrier on 895khz, I 
heard some very rapid SS on 1170khz, and some SS under WSB on 750khz. I worked my 
way up the band and stopped on 1620khz when I heard a very strong station 
running upbeat reggae type music, I parked here hoping for an ID that I never got 
but I'm pretty sure it was WDHP Frederickton, US Virgin Islands ... peaking S9 
!! This was at about 0230z.

Here is the clip in Real Audio (8 mins 14 seconds), it's big, 1 mb, but worth 
it:

http://members.aol.com/j999w/DX

Any Real Audio player should play it since I used an old version of RA 
Encoder to make it. It sounds a little muddy at max signal because the recorder is 
getting too much audio from the receiver. I need to fix that. Yet, not bad for 
a 12 year old recorder. The only other time I've heard this station it was 
very weak with poor copy. I guess these BOGs (Beverage on Ground) really DO work 
!!

It took me 15 minutes to set up including walking the wire out, and only 12 
minutes to pack up from "radio off" to swinging the pack on my back. The water 
pipe cable winder worked well. 

More expeditions to follow as time allows.

73,

John Wilke WB9UAI
Milwaukee, WI
Palstar R-30, 700ft BOG

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