On the last day of my 9-day DXpedition to the Rockwork Ocean cliff the
Western Australia station 558-6WA (9,154 miles, or 14,731 km) finally made its
first appearance of the entire DXpedition, a few hours before I needed to drive
back to Puyallup. The extreme long-range station had been heard at the Rockwork
cliff for the past three August DXpeditions, but it certainly waited until the
last moment to show up this time.
At 1254 UTC on August 9th I was set up at the Rockwork 6 ocean cliff,
after having taken my chances in squeezing in between a couple of "squatter"
vehicles in total darkness at 1100 UTC (0400 local time). I set up one 15" FSL
to record 531 kHz continuously, and another one to record 558 kHz continuously
(531-6DL and 558-6WA had both been heard by Tom R. and me last August). Nothing
at all was received on 558 until around 1253, when a station started breaking
through the 560-KPQ splatter. I assumed that this would be Radio Fiji One, as
it had been for the past 8 days-- but it wasn't. It was female-voiced DU
English, which immediately got swallowed up by Radio Fiji One after about a
minute. Fortunately, there was enough reception of the DU English station to
record a modest MP3
https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/dv5g0dc3k469p7upm5t92dy66fq34u8l
Now came the fun part-- matching the recording to the byzantine, contradictory
ABC website. The recording was a little too "challenged" to get the general
theme of conversation, and Radio Fiji One's accompaniment didn't help much. My
only hope was to dig out a few words of speech, and match it to an ABC Podcast.
According to the ABC website the program being broadcast from 558-6WA at
the time (2254 in Wagin) was "Nightlife," with Philip Clark and Sarah
Macdonald. There were multiple female guests on the program, and it seemed like
looking for a needle in a haystack. Concentrating on the time of reception I
narrowed it down to one female speaker, who fortunately said "You have to be
extremely careful of the vanity publishing area," which matched the same
content as from :30 to :35 in my 558 kHz recording above
https://dreamcrafts.box.com/s/mw00oo69wdovircqi0q95cfr5db9ykok
So 558-6WA has now been received for four years in a row at the Rockwork ocean
cliff in August-- but it's too bad that my DXpedition partners Craig, Nick and
Tom didn't gat a chance to track it down this time.
73 and Good DX,
Gary DeBock (DXing at the Rockwork 6 ocean cliff near Manzanita, OR, USA)
7.5" loopstick XHDATA D-808 portable + 15" FSL antenna
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