[HCDX] improvement in my DX

[aurel chiochiu <acq@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello to all of you !

Last night due to the poor conditions on both MW and SW bands, I decided to
do some work with the wire.

I cut with my scissors piece of a broken headphone and I placed the short
amount of its wire inside of it to the long-wire I had. Then, I connected it
to the headphone jack of some CD player's speakers I had with the encoding
cable (the one I use to transfer some of my DX and some of the music I taped
from the radio into real-audio) connected to the speakers and the wires's
terminals were standing right on one of the end of the encoding cable. The
other end was obviously connected to the radio, not too much, because
otherwise I would have extreme attenuation of signals, but in the position
where the most gain could be obtained. Connecting the long-wire I have in
our interior yard right into the radio is pretty tough and mostly I either
do not have enough gain, get extreme overload, get some overload enough
everywhere below 4.76 MHz and some higher like on 6010. Now, while I'm still
plagued by overload on the botton of 60 meters and below, I get nothing bad
on 6010 with still quite some gain over the telescopic antenna of my Sangean
CST-818 alone and the rest of the 60 meters band above 4760 is as nice as
one could get. I'm also looking forward trying some Peruvians, as it is a
country from which I never positively identified something yet.

In spite of seeing a DXer in Northern Germany with what I believe was
trans-arctic DX (several west coast stations on MW), condx here were lousy
on both MW and SW. For exemple, on 49 meters, I couldn't get at all Radio
Educación which is a station both me and Geroge Maroti qualifies as non-DX.
At least, with this little work on my antenna system, I heard some weak, but
new for me signals like on 4910, I think (very weak, with apparent Spanish)
or 4810 which would be a nice Mexican (didn't note anything down), 6125
(probably HCJB which was clearer and without neighborhood QRM). Radio
Rebelde 5025 was more pleasant to listen to only very late last night, but
way much clearer with this new improovement on the way my long-wire was
connected.

On MW, Latins were extremely poor. Only RVC-530 and even them were only fair
to good at times. Rebelde poor on all the frequencies. 600 had short-skip
WICC dominating instead of Radio Rebelde in the Holguin area. 670 had
Rebelde way under a tiring growl from our neighborhood. No TA MW DX and not
even CKEC-1320 or CKAT-600. Of course, I was visiting friends in the very
early part of the evening, so I may have missed sunset enhancement on
CKEC-1320 and other interesting Maritime targets theoritically, but
pratically even later last night the channel of 1320 had mostly weak US
stations from presumably even shorter haul distances than CJMR Mississauga
which was VERY messy (and the CJMR is a pest for me !). On 1330, I had the
Boston station with, since several months, Haitian programming instead of
Spanish tropical and pops. I wonder when they changed the format. The only
noteworthy DX was hearing Quebecor rigodon on 800 under semi-nulled CJAD for
my clearest reception of Quebec City yet. There is a place, where CJAD can
almost be completly nulled, but CHRD faded out at the time. A short-skip
signal like it would have been present with continuous signal just to
illustrate how poor the conditions were for both foreign and domestic DX.

I initially thank that the auroral zone, due to the pretty recent
geomagnetic activity, extends farther south here, than in Europe, but I'm
not sure wherever this is plausible, since the German DXer was actually
hearing stations from my own country. And hearing Vancouver and Seattle in
Germany requires quite a bit in the way of propagation assistance and the
retirment of the auroral zone. But nothing, just weak slops when I tuned at
the middle of the distances between CFRA/residual WTAG-580 and CKRS-590.

On FM, while working on my antenna system, I had tropo-scatter from Trois
Rivières on 93.9 and Ottawa (CBOF-90.7 and also 93.9). Still not even the
faintest trace of skip, but of course the mini-Es season related to the
summer peak in the Southern Hemisphere is not much of a thing here up north.
When I was a member of the WTFDA, Mike Bugaj told me the same thing. Maybe
southern TX, Central America or Venezuela have some in the way of
Sporadic-Es at this time of the year. Of course, southern Venezuela gets Es
every day, because of it's proximity to the equator and diurnal Es available
during the daylight hours at weak levels. I'm still thinking if Venezuela,
at least the northern part of it, is well placed for evening TEP or too
close to the equator so that both the afternoon TEP and evening TEP signals
skip over it.

But something as far as FM DX goes is was anyone able to tell that near the
magnetic pole, during the polar nights, Es is permanently received in the
same way diurnal Es happens in the equatorial regions ? Are there at least
some stations in the barely populated areas of northern Russia or northern
Norway ? Are there, on the web, any results about nocturnal Es ?

Finally, I think we will install the Yagi antenna this spring. When we
transported it from friends I have in the Labelle region in the Laurentians
area, one element of it broken, but it would be a great antenna.

In spite of going very late to bed last night, I woke quite early this
morning, way before 10 o'clock. Since Mexico is also a favorite target of
mine, I still hope I will enter in a normal schedule of sleep and going to
bed early for waking very early in order to get Radio Mil 6010 and others.
XEHHI-640 is high on my wanted list, but the right aurora will be in order
for me to be able to get them. With CJAD nulled to the WSW bearing, XEROK
whould be bringed with little trouble too, during the right conditions.

Hoping that conditions will get much better tonight on the MW and SW bands,
be the good DX stuff with you !
Bogdan Chiochiu
QTH: Pierrefonds, QC



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