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TA DX Season 2012/2013 has begun!
- Thread starter Tincap
- Start date
kilokat7 said:
The antennas are currently directed towards the South Pacific / North Atlantic. If I draw a line along the azimuth path of the antennas, it passes over central Texas and falls below Australia along this theoretical line. I'm hoping for better reception this season by tweaking the direction of the antennas a bit since they are very directional. We'll see.
Signals from down under were encouraging this morning but I think I got up too late. Several hets were noted in the usual places on the lower end of the band during sunrise this morning, 702 (Sydney) & 738 KHz (Tahiti) are the ones to watch here just before sunrise.
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That's incredible! So this must be beverage antenna, especially, to null out WLW? What was the time frame and how often or not does this occur? I take it there would be no way to hear the 702 in the midwest without a long wire like a beverage antenna?
stormy01 said:
The antennas are two parallel long wires placed right on the ground and spaced about two feet apart, often referred to as a beverage on the ground or "BOG". Very simple antennas. The lengths are about 350' and 250' roughly, not near the length used by a true raised beverage antenna that can be 1,000 feet or more. Two wires are used to create a steerable array by using an antenna phaser. I use CFZM 740 as my reference and I null it out as much as possible to optimize reception from the southwest, then I go chasing hets just before sunrise on the split channels. By the time these signals peak to threshold audio, the sun is coming up and most stations to my East are fading out. This was probably the case with WLW in the video, though phasing helped a little.
September-October is the optimum time of year to catch these signals. In fact I heard some threshold audio this morning just before and during sunrise on 702 and 738 Khz. 738 was most likely Tahiti as it was heard a few times here last year too with enough audio to parallel it to their webstream. I'll be chasing these signals from now until about November. Honestly, I was surprised to hear anything from down under coming in this early in the season.
If you don't have room for a BOG then I would recommend a flag antenna or KAZ that have a cardioid pattern and align the antenna to correct azimuth. A google search should provide more info on these types if interested and I would think they would perform just about as well. I may experiment with a KAZ before winter.
crainbebo said:
I find it amazing that you heard Japan on 774 without an SDR and KTTH in your neighborhood . Have you heard JOUB more than once?
It would be cool to hear a heterodyne coming from across the Pacific, but this season I don't expect to hear much of anything from that direction. I do hope to log more stations from Mexico this DX season, especially during auroral conditions. Recently I've had better luck listening for stations to the South than I've had in any other general direction.
I've heard some TP and LA DX before, although it hasn't been in a long time. There were quite a few years where I didn't DX the AM band much at all. I concentrated on monitoring the SWBC and HF ham bands.
In the 1980's I heard JOUB-774, JOIB-747, JOBB-828, North Korea-657 and Vladivostok-1477 (I could ID the languages on the last two, but sigs were pretty weak), as well as a station in Hawaii, with a boombox and a home built loop antenna. Local station KTTH (ex-KXA) was still on the air at that time, but I think it was with less power than today. I also logged a few stations in central Mexico. The band was less crowded than it is now, which probably helped.
I've heard some TP and LA DX before, although it hasn't been in a long time. There were quite a few years where I didn't DX the AM band much at all. I concentrated on monitoring the SWBC and HF ham bands.
In the 1980's I heard JOUB-774, JOIB-747, JOBB-828, North Korea-657 and Vladivostok-1477 (I could ID the languages on the last two, but sigs were pretty weak), as well as a station in Hawaii, with a boombox and a home built loop antenna. Local station KTTH (ex-KXA) was still on the air at that time, but I think it was with less power than today. I also logged a few stations in central Mexico. The band was less crowded than it is now, which probably helped.
radioman148 said:
It doesn't surprise me all that much.
At around 2:30am one morning in November 2010, I heard 594 JOAK with my Tecsun PL-380 and Select-A-Tenna. (Skip ahead to about 1:15 for a better signal.)I had to contend with local 5 kW 600 KOGO, who is 7.7 mi heading 249° from me. They're directional, with an ERP of 2.4 kW toward me (501.99 mV/m @ 1 km augmented FS toward me, RMS is 726.48 mV/m), and the ground conductivity between them & me is mostly 15 (with a little bit of 8 the last couple miles or so). While my PL-380 caps its signal indicator at 63 dBµ, my two other Tecsuns (PL-606 and PL-398mp) indicate around 67 to 69 dBµ or so, barefoot. The IBOC sidebands indicate around 40-43 dBµ or so, also barefoot.
Oh.... KOGO was also running IBOC then.
I'm guessing crainbebo likely has **FAR!!** superior equipment to mine (for example, a carrier undetectable on my radio with my best antenna (have gotten 50-60dB gain with the SAT + utility groundwire) would on his barefoot radio have about a 120 dB better S/N ratio than what David Eduardo calls a people-in-metro-LA-will-listen quality signal, and receiving TAs on 594 may(?) be a piece of cake from the car dealer lot in San Bernardino, CA, where I recorded this AM-filter-modified SRF-M37W bandscan while retaining full pre-NRSC-mask audio bandwidth) and it looks like KTTH isn't running IBOC (per empty searches @ FCC, Barry's site & HDradio.com). I look forward to seeing more logs, of course!
(One thing, though ... if I would be expecting a SDR to be so good it would make what I described seem like a crystal set with no antenna (except the leads from the components) and no tuned stages (except a tuning capacitor salvaged from a freebie/promo Coby), would I be expecting maybe just a little too much?
)Boombox, I have no trouble logging Mexico from here. At noon in June I can regularly get Mexican stations on 540, 620, 690, 730, 790, 800, 820, 850, 860, 910, 940, 950, 990, 1030, 1050, 1090, 1150, 1190, 1270, 1310, 1390, 1420, 1470, 1550, 1630 & 1700. (I suspect I may have missed a few, also.) Some have co-channel competition and/or require better equipment than a barefoot portable - one example being 910 which requires local KECR to be off the air. The Mexicans on 690, 860, 1470, and maybe a few others are so strong that with the Select-A-Tenna (tuned to their frequency) and a utility groundwire, they will overload my Tecsuns.
I've also heard NK-657 and 774 JOUB a couple years ago, also with the PL-380 + SAT, 972 South Korea, plus a few others, like tentatively 1566 HLAZ and 1575 VOA Thailand (through KMIK IBOC - 1580 is practically a local-grade signal here at night) and maybe 747 JOUB (through KCBS and/or KBRT IBOC/splatter & KFMB splatter/front-end-overload).
My next TA will be my first, btw. Yes, I will admit to attempting to find TAs on 1170 (have a local that runs 50kW day), 756 & 765 (local on 760 runs 50kW nights).
I've heard it once or twice. Once in 2010, and I think once last year...
Also heard: 594 JOAK Tokyo [NHK-1] and 693 JOAB Tokyo [NHK-2], both my record distances for AM at 4,780 miles. I pulled out JOAB after nulling out CBU on 690. I've also heard carriers on 567, 828, 747, 1287, etc...
I just have a Grundig G5 portable, pianoplayer has his Tecsun Pl-380. Even if I buy a Select-A-Tenna, I probably can't use it here due to my three REALLY local stations, KIXI 880 [2mi, 10kw night], KKNW 1150 [5kw] and KXPA 1540 [5kw].
-crainbebo
Also heard: 594 JOAK Tokyo [NHK-1] and 693 JOAB Tokyo [NHK-2], both my record distances for AM at 4,780 miles. I pulled out JOAB after nulling out CBU on 690. I've also heard carriers on 567, 828, 747, 1287, etc...
I just have a Grundig G5 portable, pianoplayer has his Tecsun Pl-380. Even if I buy a Select-A-Tenna, I probably can't use it here due to my three REALLY local stations, KIXI 880 [2mi, 10kw night], KKNW 1150 [5kw] and KXPA 1540 [5kw].
-crainbebo
Absolute Radio is coming in quite well at times, this evening, with some of the strongest signals I've heard from them (underneath the adjacent channels pests). It'll quickly come in and than quickly drop out again, with gaps between, but a little patience will pay off. Currently on my DX-440, switching over to the D5, to give it a try.
Happy hunting!
~BG
EDIT: Also coming in on the D5. Not as well, but it's there!
Happy hunting!
~BG
EDIT: Also coming in on the D5. Not as well, but it's there!
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