[HCDX] DX at Rowley, MA last night (initial comments)

[markwa1ion@xxxxxxx]

As a parallel effort to the Newfoundland and New Jersey DXpeditions, I 
did my own survey of the band for foreign DX over the weekend from home 
and on Monday night (7 NOV) from the salt-marsh site in Rowley, MA.

European DX has been good throughout this period with things shifted 
somewhat to the south, as contrasted with two weeks earlier when the 
Scandinavians, Germans, and eastern Europeans were putting in top-notch 
signals.

Monday night's Rowley outing featured the usual "mouth-of-the-Med" 
pipeline with near-local quality signals from a number of stations in 
Morocco, Algeria, Portugal, Spain, and southern France.  Northern 
European stations were present, with UK on 693 and 909 quite good, but 
most channels (e.g. 1134, 1215, 1314) where a high-power northern or 
eastern European was pitted against a lower-power Spaniard, the 
Spaniard was usually winning.

A few highlights:

1584: Ceuta right at the other end of the sunset-period "RF bowling 
alley", completely local-like, amazing for the power it runs.

1035: a totally-blockbuster signal out of Portugal, excellent with WBZ 
phased.  This should have the "steam" to make it to the West Coast.

801: uncommon Spain // 855 quite good over an Arabic-sounding station 
that may have been Jordan.  Not much weaker than the adjacent 800 
PJB/VOWR/CJAD/nulled WNNW imbroglio.

1062: Italy tops at 2257 with II talk

1500.26 unID het against WTOP/Dos Mil mix

1530a: a het grumble soup with 1529.54 (Uruguay), 1529.93 (??), and 
weak 1530 (WCKY/WVBF)

1550: RASD Tindouf, Algeria back to its old loud self at 2342 UTC with 
rustic North African music totally blowing away the domestics on the 
channel.  It was slopping up usually-easy R. Sawa - 1548.

1080: SER Spain easily punching through WTIC/YVQJ mix

1030: domestic weirdness - a fairly strong station with Fox National 
Sports Report in WBZ null at 0020 UTC.  Somebody's throwing way too 
much RF towards the Boston area on 1030!

594 & 963: // Portugals (R. Renascenca)

927: unID with back-to-back modern dance-club music; not // Renascenca 
(0036 UTC)

882: bucking the trend, UK over COPE synchro's: absolutely slamming in 
with ZZ Top song, UK DJ @ 0038

720: Portugal overrunning CHTN's new wimpy night signal !  Classical 
guitar // 666

702 & 612: both out of Sebaa Aioun, Morocco - both huge - different 
programs

585: Spain almost equal to WEZE/VOCM-590 level, that's close to 74.7 
dBu (5.43 mV/m) per the V-Soft guys - wow!  I'm sure that sitting out 
in the salt-marsh beefs this one up at least 20 dB over what I get at 
home.

Tons of other Spain, of course, including the SER 
little-engines-that-could on 1539 and 1521 nudging by the upstate NY 
1540 and 1520 blowtorches.

Some Latin Americans noted (e.g. the monster YV's on 750 and 1110) and 
the Caribbean splits (535, 555, 895) were all good, but TA activity was 
too good to spend much time on stations that would be significantly 
better during a serious aurora.

I'll try to have the logs done up by Friday morning for Bruce Conti's 
IDXD column.

Those NL and NJ DXpedition logs are going to be one interesting read.  
Maybe Europe, South Africa, and Down Under will chime in with their 
takes on this week's conditions.  And I wonder what's up out on the 
West Coast after the roaring success of October's Grayland gig.

Mark Connelly, WA1ION
Billerica, MA, USA

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