2011 CQ Magazine World Wide WPX Contest, SSB

Logged a lot of stations heard in another amateur radio contest, the 2011 CQ Magazine World Wide WPX contest, SSB. Date: Sun. March 27, 2011. Time: 11:50 - 13:00 UTC and 17:50 - 22:55 UTC. Bands: 20 and 15 metres (14 and 21 MHz).

Stations heard from Europe, North Africa, and the Americas: Anguilla, Argentina, Aruba, Belgium, Belize, Bermuda, Canada, Canary Islands (Spain), Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, England, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Martinique, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Scotland, Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, United States, Wales.

WKVQ 1540 kHz Eatonton, GA

Very early this morning the nice folks at WKVQ 1540 in Eatonton, Georgia, put on a special DX test broadcast to give DXers a chance to log them. I did not expect to hear this station because Georgia is a long way from Toronto, and because we have a 50 kW local station (CHIN) on 1540 here. WKVQ is 10 kW day, 1.6 at night. I don't know which power they used for the test but even a 10 kW station is a tough catch on a crowded frequency at that distance. Nevertheless, I knew that the station would be broadcasting Morse code IDs and that Morse code has a real ability to punch through the noise. I figured that if CHIN had a program of talk, not music, that there might be the occasional gap through which WKVQ might creep. I've logged other stations this way, by hearing IDs during brief silent pauses on the dominant station. So I set things up to record 1540 overnight so I could review the recording later.

The DX test was scheduled to run from 06:00 to 06:30 and from 07:00 to 08:00 UTC. That's 1:00 to 1:30 and 2:00 to 3:00 a.m. local time. CHIN was playing music, but there was an announcer between songs. At 06:29 I thought I heard a Morse code ID underneath CHIN during a momentary pause in the announcer's speech. Very, very faint. I had to listen to the recording over and over, fiddling with the equalizer settings in Winamp to boost certain audio frequencies and to suppress others. Eventually I was able to improve it enough to verify that I was hearing "WKV?" with the final letter being four elements long - it was partly wiped out by the announcer on CHIN. Since "Q" is a four element character in Morse code, and since no AM station is going to broadcast its ID in Morse code except in a DX test, and since there are no other stations on this frequency whose callsign starts with WKV, this was enough to convince me it was WKVQ. Cool!

This is station number 965 in my overall mediumwave log, and number 386 in the Toronto log.

2011 ARRL International DX Contest, SSB

More DXing on the amateur bands - stations heard while I was making contacts in the 2011 ARRL International DX Contest, SSB. Date: Sunday March 6, 2011, Time: 15:10 - 20:30 UTC, Bands: 15 and 10 metres (21 and 28 MHz). Good conditions, and 10 metres was open to the south.

A sampling of what I heard:

• 15 metres: HQ2GL Honduras, V48M St. Kitts & Nevis, DL2ARD & DL2DX Germany, PJ7DX St. Maarten, E71A Bosnia & Herzegovina, S50R Slovenia, 8P5A Barbados, 9A3TR & 9A5Y Croatia, TM6M & TM7F France, EA3EZD, EA3QP & EA7RU Spain, OQ4U Belgium, 5C5W Morocco, CR2A Azores, TI5N & TI8II Costa Rica, PJ4G Bonaire, CT3HF Madeira Island, J7Y Dominica, and YV5AM Venezuela.
• 10 metres: NP2I U.S. Virgin Islands, LR4E Argentina, PJ7DX St. Maarten, P49Y & PJ2T Bonaire, HK1W Colombia, and XE1CWJ Mexico.

NRV 8422 KHz

Caught a distant one today, Friday, March 4, 2011 at 13:30-13:43 UTC. On 8422 kHz I heard NRV, a U.S. Coast Guard station located on the island of Guam in the western Pacific Ocean. It was broadcasting a SITOR channel marker with Morse code IDs. I didn't have anything set up to decode the SITOR signal but the Morse code ID was clear. This is my first logging of this station, and of any station from Guam.