At least once per day I get a digest of messages from the IRCA email reflector. Among other things, it always contains reception reports from medium wave DXers in northwest Washington and here at the south end of Vancouver Island. Even on slow days these reports are encouraging because they indicate that people within a few hundred kilometers of me are hearing trans-Atlantic (TA), down-under (DU), and most commonly trans-Pacific (TP) signals. Since I have decent radios and aerials and an average location, it seems reasonable that I should at least be able to hear some of the action, at least on the good days.
Surprisingly, this has not been the case. These past two days have produced distinctly above-average reports during the very same pre-dawn hours when I have been recording the entire MW band. I simply do not understand why I find no audio and only the occasional hint of a carrier when I check my files at the very times and frequencies that correspond to the reports of the most spectacular signals. This is what has happened every time I have tried this since getting the Perseus about five years ago.
The only times I can remember ever having heard intercontinental MW DX have been when I took a portable radio to a quiet site on this island or along the coast of Oregon or northern California. The only thing I can think of doing differently is to install a very small directional loop on my small piece of real estate but that will have to wait until summer. Until I get that next antenna set up, I expect that I will confine my 9 kHz DXing attempts to outdoor sessions. Fortunately, there should still be plenty of domestic stations eager for an entry in my logbook.
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