I had been planning on waiting until I return to the Northwest in May to really "get serious" about Ultralight DXing. However, the upcoming Ultralight DX Sprint at the end of the month was just too attractive and I got sucked in early. I decided to lay a foundation for my Ultralighting by IDing the dominant on every channel, and easy first sub-dominants, with my already beloved SRF-T615. I've decided to work mostly in the Unlimited Class of receiver, since I like to fool around with antennas and other peripheral equipment, so my first move was putting together a Booster Bar, a'la Gil Stacy, from a ferrite bar and tuning capacitor that I had laying around the shack. I combined that with an under $3.00 kitchen shelf turntable from Wally World and was off to the races.
In about 6 hours, spread over three days, I managed to log 92 stations, just cherry-picking. These ranged from WSB, RVC and Radio Reloj to the Southeast, several stations in Mexico D.F. to the South and KNX, Los Angeles to the West. Northwest has only yielded KSL so far, and Regina Sask. is my most Northerly. WTAM-1100 in Cleveland is as far to the NE as I've gotten. Flat out, though, the most fun was running barefoot, hand-held, listening to WJR-760 in the clear and then flicking my wrist and catching KKZN-760 Denver, also completely in the clear. Arm chair copy in both cases and pure magic! I'm somewhat reluctantly putting in my own logging of XETI-Tempoa, Veracruz, Mexico at 250 watts for a new distance record at 250 watts, Unlimited Class. I heard them before and after 6:00AM local time, when they IDed after the Mexican National Anthem. Their night time power is listed at 250 watts. Their daytime power is 10,000 watts! At exactly 1000 miles from me, the Veracruz area stations have been old friends since my first bout of DXing from Oklahoma in the mid-50s. Even though things from there seem to come in here very well, I just gotta have some doubt about 250 watts. I also managed to log XEMF in Monclova on 780 in the WBBM null. MF is a regular visitor here and not a big surprise. Since there is no previous record in the Unlimited Class at 500 watts, my 683 miles will be a starting record. I have the turntable marked in 15 degree increments for DFing purposes and have sure found that to be an aid in preliminary identification of stations, especially confirming that I'm listening to an already logged channel dominant... Now that I've cherry-picked the dial, the "hard work" begins... great fun! I lost internet for two days (serious withdrawal symptoms) due to equipment failure at the provider, so the latest version of Ultralight Firsts and Records will be a day or two late this week. John B. Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA Rcvrs: WiNRADiO 313e, Eton e1, NRD-535(kiwa-mods) Antennas: 700' NE/SW mini-Bev, Wellbrook Phased Array (pre-production version) _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca Opinions expressed in messages on this mailing list are those of the original contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the IRCA, its editors, publishing staff, or officers For more information: http://www.ircaonline.org To Post a message: [email protected]
