MiniDXpedition with beverage on ground

John Wilke, WB9UAI, USA

Hard-Core-DX mailing list, 5 October 2003

After many opinions on portable receivers, I settled on the Palstar R-30 and quickly found one on eBay. The more I use it, the more I like the Palstar R-30. I don't notice any front end overload on MW with my EWE antennas even during the day (my Icom R71a has a little trouble when the locals run day power), and the selectivity with the stock filters is more than adequate. My only disappointment is that it's quite deaf on LW below 500khz. Hopefully someone will come up with a mod for this.
For portable operation, I wrapped the receiver in bubble wrap leaving the front and back panels accessible. The local American Science and Surplus store had 4 A-h, 12 volt rechargeable batteries cheap and I'm running one of those instead of the internal AAA batteries. The radio plus recorder fit easily inside my day pack, leaving plenty of room for full sized headphones and a spool of wire. Fully loaded the pack is quite light. Today it weighed 22 lbs because I had 700 ft of wire and some water pipe that was to be used as a cable winder.
The goal of tonight's test was more equipment oriented: How long will it take to set up? Will the radio get overloaded? Will I freeze my butt off? So I only spent 40 minutes listening. I drove to a large local park about 5 miles from home, walked about a half mile to a secluded grassy field, and set up next to a tree at the edge of the adjoining woods. Using a rock, I pounded an 18 inch piece of 1/2 inch water pipe on top of which I had a T fitting with two 6 inch pieces of pipe that makes a handy place to put the spool of wire. I took 500 ft of #14 stranded wire with another 200 ft of speaker wire soldered on the end (yup, it fit on the spool).
The 700 ft of wire just fit across the field, laying on top of some long grass. I could go longer, but it would cross a gravel access road. I tied the near end to the tree for fear that some 4wd truck would blast across the field, snag the wire, and drag away my radio! I had brought a home-brew matching transformer, but it wasn't working, so I just used the high impedance wire clip on the radio and that worked fine.
I had no problem at all with overload even with a 5kw directional local 2 miles up the road that really tears me up at home. I had the wire running towards the Caribbean but wasn't hearing any Cubans at all. RVC Turks and Caicos was running S9 down on 530khz. Voice of Nevis had a weak carrier on 895khz, I heard some very rapid SS on 1170khz, and some SS under WSB on 750khz. I worked my way up the band and stopped on 1620khz when I heard a very strong station running upbeat reggae type music, I parked here hoping for an ID that I never got but I'm pretty sure it was WDHP Frederickton, US Virgin Islands ... peaking S9 !! This was at about 0230z.
Here is the clip in Real Audio (8 mins 14 seconds), it's big, 1 mb, but worth it:
http://members.aol.com/j999w/DX
Any Real Audio player should play it since I used an old version of RA Encoder to make it. It sounds a little muddy at max signal because the recorder is getting too much audio from the receiver. I need to fix that. Yet, not bad for a 12 year old recorder. The only other time I've heard this station it was very weak with poor copy. I guess these BOGs (Beverage on Ground) really DO work !!
It took me 15 minutes to set up including walking the wire out, and only 12 minutes to pack up from "radio off" to swinging the pack on my back. The water pipe cable winder worked well.
More expeditions to follow as time allows.

New plan: Minimal setup, minimal take down

HCDX mailing list, 17 October 2003

I didn't have much time, but I did manage to sneek out for a short time tonight backpacking the Palstar R-30 to a local park and laying out a beverage on ground (BOG) antenna. This time I brought my MFJ-1026 but had left the coax jumper at home ( Doh ! ), and then while stringing out the wire, my speaker wire pigtail broke 100 ft from the end. Not knowing initially where it had broken, I stopped pulling. so that left me with 100 ft of wire still on the spool, thus I only used 500 ft tonight. This is layed in a field of tall grass.
I've got the MFJ-1026 and Palstar R-30 individually wrapped in bubble wrap, then taped together. That fits nicely in the bottom of my normal sized backpack. The plan (when I get the bugs worked out) is to only have to unzip the top of the pack, hook up the wire, turn on the radio, and be DXing. Minimal setup,
minimal take down. I've got both the MFJ and Palstar running off the same external 12v rechargable battery, and when I get a simple 12v to 9v converter built, I'll be running my tape recorder off that too.
My antenna is a 500 ft spool of stranded 14g wire with 200 ft of speaker wire pigtailed on the end of that (stretches too easily though, and breaks! ). I put the spool on a "T" made from water pipe that makes up my cable winder. I leave a 10 inch piece sticking out the ground so all I have to do is mount the "T" on that, slide the spool on, place a cap to hold on the spool, and walk it out. Winding it up is a snap using a wooden handle with a sawed off screw on the end that I stick in one of the holes on the spool. I can easily wind up the antenna at 100 ft per minute. The wire gets hidden in the woods (pretty heavy to carry each time), the pipe is dissasembled and goes in the pack. Only a short pipe sticking out of the ground stays at the DX site.
Anyway, either the band was flat today, or I just got out there too early (7pm). No Mexican or Cubans heard at all, although as I was driving home, XEX was audible on 730khz using the car radio. First impressions with this antenna can be deceiving. At home, with omni directional antennas, the band is alive with interferring stations, channels roaring with a jumble of stations comming in from everywhere. I don't hear that with the BOG. It's deceiving because as you tune across the band, stations that normally are very loud, are quite weak, then suddenly BOOM, you tune across a loud station, but it's not a powerhouse KDKA, or WSM, it's WLOC Monfordville, KY, or WDHP Frederiksted, US Virgin Islands -this antenna is very directional ! Especially at the top end of the band.
So here's tonight's log:

Palstar R-30, 500ft BOG aimed south east.
1150khz WLOC Monfordville, KY 10.17.03 1920cdt VG with quick ident.
1160khz WAMB Donelson, TN 10.17.03 1915cdt VG with Lions HSFB.
1180khz WVLZ Knowxville, TN 10/17.03 1910cdt VG with Bulldogs HSFB.
1650khz KDNZ Cedar Falls, IA 10.17.03 1900cdt VG with local news and wx.
1670khz WRNC Warner Robbins, GA 10.17.03 1905 cdt E all alone with gospel prog.

I possibly heard PJB Bonaire on 800khz tonight with a long monolog in Spanish, sounded like religious content.