Guido, Leen, Dave (holding John Plimmer) and Marc
Friday Jamuary 20 2012 saw us head down to Walsoorden again for yet another DXpedition. A few months earlier we had a very productive and successful trip to Kasterlee and this trip was going to have to be pretty special to get near that one.
But how do you measure a successful Dxpedition? The amount of stations that you hear? The quality of stations or hearing just a few new stations? For me its hearing the new ones and I'm always happy to go home with just 4 or 5 new loggings.
This trip provided me with a few new loggings. I found 1539 khz Djibouti. It was very difficult to ID because at first the shortwave // was not the same. Guido sat on the channel for quite some time and later in the evening the station started taking the Shortwave parallel. Luckily Djibouti had come back onto its shortwave outlook of 4780 khz, otherwise we probably would not have been able to ID it.
Grenada was another nice catch on 1400 khz with Harbour Light of the Windwards. It was carrying religious programs and was quite nice. The other nice catch was Radio Santa Fe from Colombia on 1070 khz. So a nice handful of catches to go home with.
The Friday evening appears to have been the most productive listening and its funny to say that I'm not quite sure how this DXpedition has turned out. "Yet"
Such is the life of Perseus dxing. You tend to go to bed earlier and just let the radio run recording the entire spectrum from 200 - 1800 khz. So not only do you get your MW band but also Longwave, the NDB beacons and Navtex.. So many juicy things to look at when you get home.
North American beverage at 290 degrees
Marc Vissers setup
This entire winter the Asian's have been very ordinary. A few years back the Japanese were audible and even VOA Philippines was nice on 1170. This year we have had 1566 AIR Nagpur and WYFR on 1557. Guido had some nice logs of Pakistan and the 1206 Indian on a previous trip but not much more. I was aiming for some Asians on 518 khz with navtex but its been dead. The furtherest reception of navtex to the east has been Bahrain / Israel. There was not even a sniff from Oman.
At Kasterlee the dx to North America was mainly from Canada and in particular Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. Already I can see conditions not being as good as they were at Kasterlee. Saturday in fact was a bit of a disaster with the CME taking place. The band was almost wiped out across the T/A however signals to the south remained okay. I'm still analyzing all the data and maybe something will pop up. Noise levels were certainly worse on the Saturday.
Guido, Dave and Leen in background
100 kph wind gusts and these were down
Leen setup
Dave's African beverage along road - Heard Dijbouti 1539 - Very Windy. We had 70 - 100 kph gusts at times.
Asian beverage at 60 degrees (Asia)
Nth American beverage
Dave Onley.
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