Bill's Grayland 2006
Bill Harms Grayland 5 Oct - 8 Oct 2006
I can wrap-up my Grayland DX experience in one word.
OVERWHELMING!
Yes, it was overwhelming. But even more important to me was the camaraderie and the swapping of DX stories. It was great to renew friendships which reach back almost 30 years and meeting people whose names I had only seen in print and spoke to on the phone. We had a good time discussing the technical aspects of DXing. Chuck Hutton loaded his receiver tuning and recording software on my laptop. The software imprints the frequency and time on the recording and this allows the DXer to able to more easily identify their DX when the listen to the recordings later.
As far as DX goes, I can not determine how good the DX was compared to other sessions because this was my first experience, but I was told it was above average. We heard plenty of stuff from NE Asia, and several stations from other regions on the other side of the Pacific. We only heard a handful of DU stations (Aussies on 702, 774, and 1548 etc.), but the number of stations from Asia more than made up for it. Alaska did okay with about 10 or so stations heard. I had a lot of fun looking for the Koreans and Japanese stations that I heard when I lived in Korea. I managed to unravel a dual ID for the two KBS stations on 1044. We still had stuff coming in way after our local sunrise. (Hubei 774, KBS on 972 and 1170 to mention a few.) What was really astounding to me was the fact that the TP signals dominated the North American stations on the channels which matched up the 9 kHz and the 10 kHz scheme. Some of them were completely on top.
I am already looking forward to the next time.
