The Asian propagation to Kauai Island during the sunrise sessions was like
having constant exposure to the best possible TP-DXing signals that ever show
up on west coast ocean beaches-- except that far more of Asia is in play. Big
gun Middle East stations like 702-BBC (in Oman) can show up at decent strength,
and not too many TP-DXers have familiarity with Arabic. Stations like
918-Cambodia which are rare DX on the west coast often thunder in at S9, and by
necessity a DXer quickly learns the Vietnam parallel frequencies for its
various networks. The Chinese propaganda blasters on 666, 783 and 909 pound in
like locals, and a DXer needs to wait out their sign off times in order to
receive anything exotic on their frequencies. The entire situation is a crash
course in surviving and thriving in the middle of nonstop exceptional
propagation, which can easily overload your abilities to sort out languages,
stations and programming. Depending on your TP-DXing experience, you wil
l either find this situation thrilling or bewildering.
If you have extensive TP-DXing experience on west coast ocean beaches you
will probably feel like you are on Cloud Nine, but without this experience you
will probably wonder where to start. The usual Asian big guns on 594, 747, 774
and 972 are either buried in Honolulu splatter or have trouble holding down
their frequencies. Language recognition of Chinese, Korean and Japanese becomes
crucial in sorting out unfamiliar stations, and at least basic recognition of
Vietnamese, Thai and Taiwanese is helpful. In addition, knowledge of exotic
station frequencies is essential before a DXer can hope to track these exotic
stations down. Many exotic station frequencies (like 576, 594, 657, 693 and
others) are jumbled with Honolulu splatter, and you need to know which ones are
not (702, 729, 918 etc.).The amount of TP-DXing experience that you can bring
to the island is directly related to the results that you can expect from DXing
on the island. Fortunately, because of two previous
Hawaii trips and an April visit to the Cook Islands, I was able to track down
some thrilling TP-DX on Kauai-- 693-Bangladesh, 702-BBC (Oman), 729-Myanmar,
918-Cambodia, plus Vietnam stations on 675, 702, 711 and 729. An S9-level
800-Radio Transmundial jumped over to 801 during an evening session without any
effort on my part. File review is continuing, though, and more exotic Asian
stations may still show up.
Hawaiian station splatter is a major issue in Kauai, but depending upon
the location of these pests, their signals may taper off just before TP
propagation collapses (around 1705 in November). On my last session I was able
to finally track down the 1000 kW Asian big gun 693-Bangladesh through wicked
690-KHNR (Honolulu) spatter, probably because the pest was farther into
daylight than my more westerly Kauai location. The Hawaii pests on Maui and the
Big Island also display the same behavior.
Propagation slowdowns on the west coast seem to be fairly irrelevant in
Hawaii, with the only difference being S9 Australian and NZ signals showing up
in the null of the S9 Asians. During regular sessions the big gun ANZ stations
are usually around at S5 levels in the null of the Asians, but I didn't really
go after the DU's during the Kauai trip. The Pacific island exotic stations on
540, 621, 846, 1017, 1098 and 1440 were all at S9 levels about 2 hours after
local sunset, but once again the North and South American transoceanic DX
stations were turning their frequencies into a pretty wild fiasco. Originally
it seemed like a great idea to have a straight salt water shot to all these
areas, but be careful what you wish for-- you just might get it :-)
(TO BE CONTINUED)
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