Hi Phil.

I grew up in a small settlement, and compared to the city, it was 
electrically very quiet.  I miss it.

But, probably the best listening experience I ever had was medium wave 
DXing from out in the middle of the Carribean on a small island with a 
battery powered radio and no commercial power for miles.  It was 
awesome.  In one night, I heard stations on medium wave from 22 states.  I 
was sitting about 30 miles off the coast of Honduras at the time.  The best 
catch of the night was WWKB in Buffalo, NY on 1520 KHz.  It was about 5 
signals deep on the frequency, but the "I Love New York" jingle that was 
being used to promote tourism in New York State at the time was 
unmistakable even on a croweded frequency.

It was hard to say which I enjoyed more--quiet radio conditions or the 
trade winds.  But, I did learn quickly to stay out from under the coconut 
trees when the wind blows.  I noted the thud that I heard in the sand from 
a coconut falling from a tree about 60 feet away, and decided that I 
definitely didn't want something that would make that much noise in sand 
hitting my head!

73, de Lou K2LKK

P.S.  A little factoid I learned about five years ago while in 
Florida--about 150 more people are killed in a year by falling coconuts 
than by shark attacks!


At 04:57 PM 7/2/2007 -0600, you wrote:
>Isn't it funny how it seems like the band noise drops when signals are
>flurishing on any given band.  Let the band go dead and one or two weak
>signals leak through, and the noise is a pain in the butt.  When I lived in
>western Colorado, I had a house in the new sub division of this little town
>up above the town itself.  All cables were buried.  Zero noise on every
>freaking band.  I had a clear view, for what that is worth when you are
>blind, directly east to the mountains for about 20 miles.  To the west, it
>was flat for hundreds of yards due to an open field.  My 80 and 40 meter
>inverted vees worked stuff I never have even heard here in Denver with all
>the city man made noises.  I had a vertical on the ground in my backyard
>over there, too, and on 40 meters, it blew holes through the west coast when
>working DX on 40 meters.  I was totally amazed.  The bands were hot back
>then, though, and that sure made a big difference but that zero line noise
>was amazing.  I have a friend who went out for a 160 meter contest and they
>put up a hot air balloon with 130 foot wires for radials and a ground plane
>on 160 meters and sailed it up to about 120 feet.  My friend told me that
>one night, he tuned down around the 150 to 500 KHZ band and he heard VOR
>signals he had never heard before.  Oh, I forgot to mention.  They were 13
>miles from the nearest power lines and used a quiet generator to power their
>160 meter station.
>
>Phil.
>K0NX
>
>
>
>--
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>10:02 AM

Louis Kim Kline
A.R.S. K2LKK
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