Good catch!
This past Saturday morning at around 1029 UTC (3:29am local time),
I also heard 594-JOAK Tokyo, Japan, on my PL-380 with the Select-A-Tenna, and finally had it confirmed by someone on the ultralightdx yahoo group. JOAK-594 is a difficult one for me, as I'm less than 8 miles from 600-KOGO, a local 5kW IBOC talk station, and about 5600 miles from Tokyo. I've thought I had them a couple times before, but they were just too weak to punch through KOGO's IBOC those times, but this time there was just enough for someone to recognize the Japanese speech on it.
That makes my third TP so far, although it's not my farthest. That prize for now goes to
657 kHz from Pyongyang, North Korea, first received at 6:26am local time (PDT) on September 23 from a little over 6,000 miles away.
As for strongest/best TP signal thus far, that prized position is currently occupied by
my Oct 20, 6:45am local time reception of 774-JOUB Akita, Japan, at a distance of a little over 5400 miles. Local talker 760-KFMB, a little over 7 miles away, had just cut to their 5kW daytime power. It was strong enough, in fact, that I was able to get
this recording at 6:47am local time on my Panasonic RQ-SW20, a walkman-sized radio/cassette player whose selectivity isn't much better than the Sony SRF-M37W (a radio known on the ultralightdx group for horrible AM selectivity) and is a bit less sensitive (which probably could level the selectivity playing field a bit between the two radios). Even before local sunrise, when KFMB was on their 50kW night power, I still was able to get
a usable signal from 774-JOUB at 6:40am local time. I also attempted it on the Panasonic, but although I could make out some bits of audio, the splatter from KFMB was overpowering it fairly severely, and I haven't uploaded that recording.
I have yet to log that Caribbean beacon, or anything from central/south America, or the USA east coast. So far my farthest catches to the east are almost a tie at 1700 miles (slightly over but both under 1701, and a fraction of a mile difference between the two) - 720 WGN and 780 WBBM Chicago, both received on the Panasonic RQ-SW20 with the Select-A-Tenna. WGN was caught at a time when 720-KDWN was off the air, and I think I was able to pull in WBBM out from under 780-KKOH and splatter from 760-KFMB, although now I hear KAZM Sedona, AZ, when KKOH is nulled. I've also heard 870-WWL New Orleans a few times (usually occupied by KRLA Glendale, though), but they're a little closer to me than Chicago.
My farthest confirmed catch to the north is 1000-KOMO Seattle, WA, which is probably a local for you, and is usually heard at night under semi-local 250-watt (nighttime) KCEO in Vista. One early morning a few months ago, when local 1130-KSDO (10kW a little over 6 miles north of me) was off the air for some reason, I heard what sounded like a man talking on 1130 and listened for several minutes, although the signal was extremely faint. Soon the signal faded down into the jumble, then came back up, and I heard what sounded like it could have been the same man talking (or if it wasn't, it sounded very similar). After a couple minutes, I figured out it was a religious broadcast from central California. Unfortunately I never was able to hear an ID during the initial few minutes, so I don't know if I heard the station from Vancouver, BC.
