To trans-Pacific DXers VOA Thailand on 1575 kHz isn't a rare station — its one megawatt transmitter sees to that. However, propagation and geography still come into play as I'd previously recorded 1575 all night a few times but never heard anything but noise; that changed this weekend.
Friday and Saturday evenings began very nicely with unusual conditions. KICY Nome dominated 850 both nights, blowing away KOA Denver and becoming a regular rather than a rare catch. The Japanese stations made a very nice appearance both nights with 774 Akita being the strongest. I was at the radio both evenings and the 4 kHz het on 774 was incredibly loud on Friday but on Saturday propagation from KTTH Seattle must have been weaker because the het was weaker too. I was actually in another room when 774 first faded up and the whistle told me that it was sunset in Japan; time to stop whatever I was doing because the trans-Pacific show had just started.
Saturday night at the height of the show as I was tuning across the band listening for hets I had a strange feeling about the broadcast band. The band felt unfamiliar, as if I were at a different location a few hundred kilometres away with still-familiar stations but with never-before-heard stations on the band too and they were weird because they weren't on frequencies ending with zero. Maybe it all felt dreamlike because by that point it was 03:30 PDT and the caffeine was wearing off. Hmm, people who only record with an SDR may not experience this!
On both nights I recorded 1575 after going to sleep; sunset in Thailand hadn't happened yet and I was tired. Friday's recording had moments with voices; exciting, but not proof. However, Saturday's recording had the big payoff: Extended moments of voices and music and then a clear 1 kHz interval signal followed by Yankee Doodle and the "VOA News" ID at 1230 UTC with the URL "voanews.com/lao", followed by an hour of material which had a lot of fading but the signal was there often enough and intelligible enough to keep the level of excitement high. It all ended with our sunrise. Very exciting! My farthest MW station at 11800 km.
What's nice about 1575 is that the frequency is reasonably far away from any strong locals so that it's mostly free from splatter. Being well-positioned half-way between 1570 and 1580 puts the hets at 5 kHz which can be filtered easily. The splatter situation could change with the 1550 KRPI move, so listen now!
This was all with the R-71a and Pennant. Before I went to sleep I took the Grundig G8 outside to see if it would hear Japan on 774 barefoot but there was nothing. This weekend I had tried coupling the Pennant to it but the strong local signals drove it into blocking or severe desense. I'll need to try again with a preselector.