How Does Your Home Rate as a DX Location?

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How Does Your Home Rate as a DX Location?

Postby jon » Tue Sep 17, 2013 6:36 pm

Eldon-Mr.CFAY wrote:Jon I have a question for you, how would you rate Edmonton as a dx location for mediumwave dxing compared to your many years of dxing in Burnaby back in the 60s etc..??? I know several dxers were in IRCA back in those days dxing from Edmonton such as John Oldfield and the late Percy K... among others. In the 80s I found Calgary, Alberta to be a good dx location especially considering I was almost downtown. Testing out loop antennas in the day and at night generally I did not find much TVI or noise then, was on the ground floor of the apartment building with my office and workshop though. Perhaps the grounding was good in the building which might have helped. But was quite pleased with results there! I know you moved to a new home location in Edmonton in the past year Jon. Have you found the new Edmonton location better than your old one for AM reception?

Anyway just a few thoughts about this. I have often thought that one ideal location for AM Dxing aside from near the oceans would be a rural town location in Southern Saskatchewan perhaps a place like Assiniboia, a fair distance south of Regina. I am speaking about this in terms of Domestic North American DX from the States and Canada and perhaps Mexico. If you are interested in TP Pacific or Trans-Atlantic dx from foreign countries obviously the rural ocean locations like Newfoundland or west coast of Vancouver Island would be best!

Take care everyone! 73s

Eldon

Take care everyone!!! 73s

I took the liberty of starting a new thread, to discuss DX Locations.

Just last week, I was looking at Google StreetView, to figure out the best place to take a picture of the CFRN-AM towers, when I realized just how close I used to live to them. Previously, I thought CFRN was more to the West. I used to live at about 20 Avenue and 156 Street. And CFRN is at about 20 Avenue and 205 Street. That equates to just over 4 miles. At that distance, CFRN's 50,000 watts was even picked up on the telephone wiring in my house and could be heard behind every phone call. Using the internal antenna on the CCRadio-EP, you could hear CFRN's 1260 signal behind W-14-40 CKJR in Wetaskiwin!

I'm now 3 miles SSW, which put me a lot closer to CHFA-680: they were just over 2 miles South with the equivalent of 25,000 watts in my direction, given their North only pattern day and night with 10,000 watts. Thankfully, they are off the air now, moved to FM to make room for development, with Housing already built just East of them. CJCA and CHED are a little farther away, but fire the equivalent of 100-150KW in my direction at night.

My days in East and South Burnaby were nothing like this. When I started DX'ing, CKWX was the only 50,000 watt station North of Seattle and West of Edmonton and Calgary. CKNW was 10,000 watts day and 5,000 watts night, and actually went off the air for a few hours at least monthly on Monday mornings in the wee hours. Plus, there was a ridge running West to East through Vancouver and Burnaby, and I was North of it, which provided some help. Of course, a long wire was pretty much useless as the image rejection on even low-end communications receivers like my Lafayette HA-230 was nothing spectacular. Especially once CKNW, CHQM, CKWX and CFUN were all 50,000 watts. Mixing products filled the dial.

It took a 4 foot tuned (but not amplified) box loop to null out the interference. Even then, it was not long before the only interesting DX was after midnight Sunday nights in those waning years of "everyone" going off the air once a week for transmitter maintenance. CJOR and CKNW were the local exceptions. The North portion of South America, the East Coast of Asia and the Pacific Islands were then possible thanks to the U.S. clear channel stations all being off the air. Even regional frequencies like 1460, 1470 and 1480 were completely dead except when stations tested their transmitters, often daytimers.

Today, to DX this close to 50KW transmitters, I have to use an external small tuned unamplified loop antenna on the CCRadio-EP and an external audio amplifier (ghetto blaster with input intended for an MP3 player). When I was that close to CFRN (in the other house), I could only hear stations within 200 KHz each side of 1260 by detuning the loop farther away from 1260 than the frequency I was listening to AND moving the loop well away from the CFRN transmitter's direction.

As for RF noise, I am really impressed with improvements in noise reduction technology in even inexpensive radios like the CCRadio-EP. Though what I suspect is plasma picture tube RF interference is still pretty common. As well, being in new neighbourhoods means the utility company's power transformers aren't 50 years old.

There are Alberta DX'ers who still hear Asia/Pacific stations every year or two. But they are not anywhere near urban areas or even local transmitters. I don't expect to hear any myself.

On the other hand, Percy Kesteven and John Oldfield regularly got Scandinavian stations in the winter from within the City. But, in those days, the only local 50,000 watt transmitters were CBX and CFRN. I have yet to give it a try.

Moving South of the City, even just 20 miles, would help a lot, since the switch to 50,000 watts for most stations meant almost no signal South at night. That idea sounds good "on paper" but the truth is that a lot of the best DX here would be before local sunset when local stations would still be on Day pattern, some of which are non-directional. More important than DX'ing stations to the West on day pattern and, of course, Daytimers, is reception "over the Pole" often comes in well before sunset in the winter.

Finally, this far North means DX'ing in the late spring and summer requires staying up pretty late at night.

For the moment, I just don't have the time to put a priority on DX'ing. Interesting, but much too time-consuming to get the kinds of results that would hold my interest. Not to mention the fact that I much less likely to hear compelling live local content that would both attract my listening attention as well as making it easier to ID a station.
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Re: How Does Your Home Rate as a DX Location?

Postby Toomas Losin » Tue Sep 17, 2013 8:47 pm

Let me tell y'all the story of this here modern day Lower Mainland. My first round of DXing was in the mid-80's before 1200 and 1040 had local stations. I haven't heard WOAI or WHO since!

Being the geeky type, I plotted the location of all the AM transmitters in the Lower Mainland on a map. They form a tight little cluster in East Richmond and Delta, with CKNW, CBU, and KVRI as outliers to the East, West, and Southeast, respectively. As a result, Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Delta, Ladner, Richmond, and New West are all covered by some horrible RF soup. The frequencies are 650, 690, 730, 980, 1040, 1130, 1200, 1320, 1410, 1470, and 1600, plus an array for 600 that's not doing much right now. All but three are at 50 kW day and night.

What's a poor ol' AM radio to do with all those frequencies pummelling its front end? My Icom R71a has a hefty dynamic range, allegedly 102 dB if I remember the spec sheet correctly, so it can still dig out the weak signals with all that energy beating on it although first adjacent channels are difficult -- I couldn't DX without the radio. Even with all that dynamic range there are intermodulation products in a dozen places across the band when a good broadband antenna is connected. Very fortunately, those go away during the night for some reason that I don't understand, so I haven't yet needed a preselector.

I'm dreading the addition of KRPI 1550 at 50 kW into this mess; Point Roberts, Tsawwassen, Ladner, and Delta will be hit in the crossfire when that starts up. I'm hoping that doesn't make new intermodulation products for me that show up at night too.

So a good radio can still do a good job in such a horrible RF mess but its not a panacea, one still has to work around the problems.

I've tried to couple the Pennant antenna to my more consumer-type Grundig G8 and Tecsun PL-390 but their front ends overload and go into blocking. They don't have enough dynamic range, although they should work fine with a preselector or a tuned loop. So "normal" radios will have problems when trying to use a good antenna. My car radio, for a worse example, has intermodulation products despite being all stock.

Despite the RF levels I'm able to hear Trans-Pacifics like Japan, Korea, and VOA Thailand when conditions permit. Last year there was a Trans-Atlantic opening that allowed me to hear Radio86 transmitting from Pori, Finland a couple of times over a few evenings. Australia has proven to be possible but, in general, the South Pacific may not do well in the Lower Mainland; to prove that, I'm waiting for a good opening that everyone else hears but I don't. I hope I'm proven wrong. :-)

Has anyone been out to Ucluelet, Long Beach, or Tofino and tried some Trans-Pacific DX? Better yet, does anyone live out there and can provide year-round tales of DX conditions?
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Re: How Does Your Home Rate as a DX Location?

Postby Tape Splicer » Wed Sep 18, 2013 11:18 am

Toomas; Thanks for that detailed report. This area is a challenge to DX the AM band. I also enjoyed your report on trans-pacific radio catches.

I like to get out of town to search out what is on the frequencies next to our local 50K stations. I am using a Grundig G6, which serves me well for casual DXing. When

When I was last in the Comox valley our local stations came in quite clearly, especially in the evenings - The same was true of the eastern Fraser Valley. But getting away from this area allowed one to tune in to the frequencies next to our power house stations - and some times hear what is on the same frequencies as our local.s.

The west side of Vancouver Island would be a great place to set up a long wire antenna and sit back and see what comes accross the air waves. Good DXing to you Toomas.
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Re: How Does Your Home Rate as a DX Location?

Postby skyvalleyradio » Wed Sep 18, 2013 12:39 pm

Toomas - I'm a seasoned veteran of AM & FM and ham DXing on the Long Beach peninsula and have written here before about some of my past DX exploits out there. I take a 600 ft roll of wire to string through the trees parellell to the ocean, high enough so nobody gets whacked with 18 guage wire! My priorities out there are always FM tropo DX first or ham 144 mHz CW (2 meters) tropo, but if the FM bands are dead, I concentrate on MW. I've heard most of the powerhouse Japanese, Thailand, Australia, NZ signals, Hawaii plus a few Pacific islands. Receivers for MW include GE Superadio III, Sony ICF-6700w, Sony ICF-7600 & 1969 vintage Grundig 'Melody Boy' FM gear used: Superadio III plus my home FM monitor - Magnum-Dynalab FT-101 Etude with 3 selectable IF filters. I use a home-made collpsable 4-element FM yagi built of 1/4" copper plumbing tube. Victoria DX whiz Nick Hall also DXes from the same beachfront cottages as I and on 2 occasions we've both been holed up on MacKenzie Beach chasing south pacific MW. Highly recommended and MUCH easier than trying to DX within the lower mainland/northwest Wash region we live in.
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Re: How Does Your Home Rate as a DX Location?

Postby Toomas Losin » Wed Sep 18, 2013 7:49 pm

I'm sorry, I had forgotten about your previous mentions of DX on the west side of the Island. It seems that I should plan a trip out there one day. I've always been more interested in what I can hear from home but still, one needs a basis for comparison.
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