Hi all:

I’m on business for a couple nights on the Oregon coast near Seaside. I
had a great dinner with Patrick Martin last night, the local DX master,
and really enjoyed gabbing on and on about DX with him!

My hotel room is unfortunately an RF zoo, so I ended up finding a nice
quiet picnic table at the shore, a couple miles north in Gearheart, OR,
arriving at about an hour prior to the 1250 UTC (0550 local) sunrise. I
used an active/passive Crate Loop, coupled to a Tecsun PL-380 via a little
ferrite coupler, and a Sony 7600GR barefoot spotter.

Things were ominously dead for the first 30 minutes, then picked up a bit,
although conditions were nowhere near as good as they were for Gary DeBock
last week, who was a few miles south at Cannon Beach. Oh well – as least
it was lightly misting/raining the entire time :-)

I managed to pick up a few tidbits from the ionosphere, all DU, with
reception continuing until 1320, about 30 minutes after local sunrise:

567 Nearly intelligible EE male and female announcers at 1245, presumed NZL
594 Male announcer at 1247, to weak to tell language
612 Good EE announcer at 1257, mention of “Australia”, so 4QR-Brisbane.
Another “Australia” at 1313.
648 Presumed EE by cadence at 1311
657 Chariots of Fire music at 1216, presumed Wellington, NZL
675 Good EE voice at 1233, presumed 2C0 (AUS) or 3YA (NZL), still sorta
there at 1309
702 Came on late at 1304 with EE male, presumed 2BL-Sydney, possible ID at
1305 (need to check recording)
738 Weak French (Tahiti) at 1219, burbles at 1236, excellent FF at 1247
with 2NR Grafton AUS occasionally on top; the two were still battling it
out at 1257, but almost gone at 1307
765 Brief music at 1222, unknown
774 Weak EE female voice at 1318, presumed 3LO, couldn’t make out words
though
792 EE newscast with “ABC Radio” ID at 1319, so 4RN-Brisbane confirmed
891 EE news at 1237 presumed 5AN Adelaide, barely there at 1252, better EE
male at 1259, mention of “Australia” at 1322 apparently confirming 5AN
972 Sounds like EE at 1237, no clue who though
1071 Good late het at 1322, not enough to hear anything though
1098 Brief EE? News at 1240, unknown
1116 Good EE signal at times, but buried under 1120-KPNW

So, not quite what I had hoped for, but given the infrequency of my
getting out to the beach, I’ll take anything I can get! One more shot
tomorrow morning, perhaps trying Cannon Beach instead, then back home.

Kevin S
Bainbridge Island, WA