In one of the wildest sessions imaginable an FSL-enhanced Tecsun PL-380 model proved once again that it is fairly competitive with the large, inductively coupled FSL antennas that have performed so well at Oregon cliff sites. During a 4-hour session at Grayland it tracked down all sorts of unusual DX, including 531-PI (a New Zealand DU), almost all of the mid-band CRI stations (at potent levels), and a mystery TP on 1377 mixing loudly with CNR1. The performance of the stand-alone FSL PL-380 was so surprising that the single monster FSL taken along on this trip (a 15" model) wasn't even required until very late in the session, when it sorted out a 531 DU snarl to provide a pretty nice logging of 531-4KZ. My session started off (kind of) right in my room at the Walsh Motel, with 1566-HLAZ already at an S9+ level at the bizarre hour of 1030 UTC. After setting up on the beach at the end of Grayland Beach Road at 1145 I discovered that almost all of the mid-band CRI stations were pounding in at serious levels, and managed to record all of them on the $95 hot-rodded portable within the next hour. Right in the middle of this activity I noticed a serious carrier on 531 which wasn't coming from the Asian direction, and decided to record it as well. After checking it out later on it had the distinct voice of the Samoan lady announcer on 531-PI, a station which shows up frequently at Rockwork 4. After recording various Japanese, Chinese and Korean signals over a two hour period a mystery station showed up on 1377 mixing at a powerful level with CNR1, having music which sounded unlike anything CNR1 would play. After a vibrant 1377 recording I went back to the 531 DU frequency, and found a snarl between PI and an Australian talker station. It was finally time to use the 15" FSL and CC Skywave combination, and they did manage to clear up the mystery with a nice recording of an apparent 531-4KZ. The original master plan had been to check signal strength levels between a single stand-alone 3" FSL Tecsun PL-380 model and the 15" FSL + CC Skywave combo on various TP signals-- but that plan went out the window immediately when the "Science Fiction PL-380" was receiving almost every target station at near S9 levels. With only one of these hot-rodded PL-380's managing such astonishing results on the first day, it's easy to understand how a "squadron" of these $95 monsters could track down much more DX on different high-priority frequencies, and dramatically boost the effectiveness of Ultralight ocean beach DXpeditions. 531 4KZ Innisfail, Australia Presumed the Aussie talker station with weather report and call-in talk show at 1413 https://app.box.com/s/3q38z2z6txkuuuzawccxr1zreilcynqz https://app.box.com/s/tnegabxvcx2b9r1qtwsrytfqiie7y3pt 531 PI Auckland, New Zealand Samoan female announcer a pretty big surprise at 1225 https://app.box.com/s/3u07c46dgtjo18u3ysxysb52ckorwv8p 1017 CRI Changchun, China CRI Korean service at very good level at 1255 https://app.box.com/s/j6d02s36trf95m998a6fv1d2e8yy6j0u 1035 CNR1 Synchros (presumed) Strong female speech with echoes at 1146 https://app.box.com/s/5zur0e5dndtyut8um7gbgok2dkps4s8n 1206 CRI Yanbian, China CRI Korean service at S9 level at 1206 https://app.box.com/s/6jsz4m3yklhvid1vg4sypx3evri7i5ms 1323 CRI HJ, China Russian service female announcer with serious strength at 1253 https://app.box.com/s/sp8rhxkv1f3b1roubkujoldgrhp9yh3r 1377 UnID-TP The mystery of the morning-- very strong exotic music and a female announcer mixing with CNR1's male Chinese speech at 1345. The 6125 kHz CNR1 // was checked, and this certainly wasn't it. Does this sound like RRI Toli Toli? https://app.box.com/s/bkgpxuz4x2egltbpiiegzfp1mnxd504m 73 and Good DX, Gary DeBock (temporarily at Grayland, WA) Stand-alone 3" FSL Tecsun PL-380 Ultralight (all recordings except for 531-4KZ, which was made on the 15" FSL and CC Skywave) _______________________________________________ IRCA mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/irca
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