Coorong DXpedition
January 11-15, 1999

by David Onley

January 9 - 15 I headed to South Australia for Craig Edwards's engagement to Michelle. We had a few decent nights in Adelaide in sweltering 43C heat before heading to the Coorong for some Dx. Craig and I have had some terrific catches at this site over the years and my expectations were quite high. We both left the shack on the Friday morning feeling rather disappointed in the trip. However after typing up the trail it wasn't such a bad effort after all.

As for the Europeans it was pretty poor. There were the odd stations around such as VOA Rhodes on 1260, Novi Sad 1269, Radio Monte Carlo 1233, BRT Belgium 1512 and the Vatican on 1611. These were all the powerhouse stations however and there were no signs of 1296 BBC Orfordness, 1359 Spain, 1413 Pristina, 1431 Ukraine, 1287 RFE Litomysl etc. The list goes on.

The interesting observation was that the Middle Eastern stations were quite strong but that extra bit of distance tended to snuff out the Euro's. The big surprise of the trip was the strength of the Filipino stations. I have to admit that one 600-meter beverage was pointed directly at the Philippines. We got two decent shots at the Philippines just on their sunset and again on our sunrise. Some of them would stay in all night or until sign/off but most peaked on the greyline, which was quite interesting.

The Indonesians made the odd appearance 1206 RRI Denpasar was down on previous years however it was good to hear personal new ones such as 909 RRI Sorong and RRI Jambi on 1098. The only Africans to show their heads were VOA Sao Tome on 1530 and Maralal Kenya on 1386.

We used 3 beverage antennas. We aimed 600m at Central Africa, 600m at Central Europe, 600m at the Philippines and 250m at Japan. It was interesting experimenting with terminating the beverages and using proper earthing. I have come to the conclusion that earthing plays a very big part. When you play with big antennas the earth bleeds noise away and can be the key to getting that extra S-point.

We had a terrific ground at the receiver end in the form of an old rail line used as a clothesline. After scrapping some rust off I was amazed at the jump in signal when we connected it to the matching transformer. At the receiver end we used two pre-amps which were acted as splitters, we could use two receivers off the one antenna without any loss. The preamps worked well mid afternoon and early evening for the groundwave signals however after dark there was far too much overloading and images. From the preamps we ran coax out of the shack to the bevs via a small balun (20metres) Both ends of the coax were grounded as were the beverages via a 600 ohm resistor and copper pipe (Not ideal but ok) We used the 3 receivers 2 Drake SPR-4's and my trusty old Trio 9R-59DS which can still work miracles given the opportunity.

Coorong Trail Items 11 - 15 January 1999

792 1824 BEC33 Han Sheng Hualien TWN. Very strong w/Chinese. Female chat. 12/1
837 1950 Esfahan IRN Weak under 4RK w/presumed Farsi. 11/1
909 1830 RRI Sorong. Strong Signal at times with Indonesian. Telephone conversations. 12/1
927 1835 Izmir TUR Fair at times under 3UZ. TRT-1 program in Turkish 12/1
945 1839 DXRO Cotabato City. Nte PHL Nice signal. Zany DJ's w/laughter & chat. 12/1
999 1123 RRI Jakarta. Dominant over 2NB, Discussion and feature program with 2 gents. 11/1
1035 1842 DZWX Baguio City PHL Tent this w/phone calls and chat. Mixing with Taiwan 12/1
1098 1110 RRI Jambi Solid w/Indonesian chat. Heard while looking for 4LG (Life's Good) 13/1
1206 1255 RRI Denpasar. Not as strong as in the past. Mixing w/Canberra. Indo play13/1
1215 1107 DYRF Cebu City PHL. Regular and strong. Talk format 12/1
1233 1915 RMC Cape Greco CYP Arabic & English Songs. Poor compared to last trip 13/1
1251 1913 Tripoli LBY Voice of the great homeland. Arabic program - Male commentary 13/1
1260 1911 VOA Rhodes GRC Weak but audible w/Arabic. Only heard once whole trip. 13/1
1269 1237 DYWB Bacolod, Neg. Occ. Heap of non-stop talk w/Male Announcer. Fair. 12/1
1269 1739 Novi Sad YUG Another disappointing signal. Here with Serbian program.13/1
1287 1852 RRI Palembang. Fair with Indonesian pops. Mixing 2TM & Chinese station 12/1
1296 1200 DXAB Manila. Mixing with Shanghai. Police sirens, Mission Impossible theme. 11/1
1296 1200 Shanghai. Strong over DXAB and 4RPH. Chinese Female Announcer w/talk 11/1
1296 1737 Reba SDN. V.O the Nation program in Arabic. No sign of BBC Orfordness 13/1
1305 1856 Yan Kraw Bangkok THA. Screaming cat mx and presume Thai vocals. 12/1
1314 1756 Dabiya UAE. Big over Sports Radio with Arabic program.12/1
1314 1130 DWXI Paranaque. MM. PHL As with most of the Filipino's lots of chat - Strong 12/1
1341 1750 Cairo EGY Huge over the top of 3GL.Arabic cultural program 13/1
1350 1905 JOER Hiroshima JPN Strong Signal over 2LF w/Japanese pop songs.13/1
1359 1857 Batra EGY Arabic mx at fair level. No sign of Spain.13/1
1368 1858 El Kharga EGY. Good level w/Arabic General program. Talk & mx.12/1
1404 1720 JOVR Shizuoka JPN (SBS) Female announcer in Japanese. Chat. 12/1
1413 1144 DYDW Tacloban City PHL Powerhouse signal w/religious program.12/1
1431 1714 Isfahan IRN Talk & mx in presume Farsi. Reasonable level.12/1
1440 1646 Dammam ARS The usual powerhouse Arab with talk & mx.12/1
1449 1334 6TAB Mandurah WA race results from around Australia. Poor 13/1
1449 1149 DXRM Marawi City PHL Tentative w/Male Announcer. Lots of chat & jingles. 12/1
1449 1710 Bandar-e-Torkman IRN. Very strong w/Persian program of mx & talk. 12/1
1494 1150 DWLR Quezon City MM. Lots of laughter and fun between female announcers 12/1
1503 1202 Unid Philippines. Heard w/possibly Cebuano dialect. Jingles & chat. Any ideas? 12/1
1512 1204 DYAB Manila. Very strong w/English and Tagalog. Id's and jingles. 12/1
1512 1928 BRT Brussels. Poor w/talk between male and female some mixing from DYAB 11/1
1512 1851 BEP27 Taipei TWN Traffic Program. Strong w/ Mandarin talk and Classical mx 13/1
1512 1851 Jeddah ARS Call to Prayer at strong levels 13/1
1521 1906 Duba ARS Arabic mx, male vocals at poor level under 2QN.12/1
1530 1702 VOA Pinheira Sao Tome. Weak under 2VM. VOA news in EE 12/1
1539 1653 Arbat IRN Poor w/Farsi program under Aussies. 12/1
1539 1849 Udon Thani THA. Thai mx and talk at poor level under Australians. 13/1
1548 1207 DYDM Manila. Huge over 4QD w/talk format. Phone calls and jingles. 12/1
1557 1215 DWGO Olangapo C. Zamb. Poor & Noisy w/talk format.12/1
1557 1936 Ardabil Iran. Strong Signal w/Persian mx with the occasional Male Announcer. 11/1
1566 1945 Sfax TUN Arabic vocals and suffering from heavy jamming.11/1
1593 1946 Unid. European in German Possibly Holzkirchen 11/1
1611 1843 Vatican VAT Very poor in Latvian under 6AY & 6GS 13/1

Posted on September 1, 2002