Hi John,

It's good to hear you are doing OK in rain-drenched Atlanta! Here in
the Seattle vicinity we have a reputation for rain, rain, rain...but
it rarely comes down in buckets like it does in the southeast USA.

Well, at least Atlanta HAS an amateur radio store! The last one in
Seattle folded years ago. Amateur Radio Supply in the Georgetown area
near Boeing Field was also somewhat cluttered and uninviting, but
still I enjoyed going there to see what was new.

You commented about finding very little on SW compared to your South
Africa home. In fact, you are in a part of the USA that has more on
the SW bands than much of the country. The Southeast has the benefit
of better Latin DX to the south, and European/African DX to the east.
In comparison, my Pacific Northwest part of the country is more signal
starved. In trips I've made across the country I've really noticed the
difference. There are times I've tuned 60 meters from here on a good
portable and found nothing more than WWV and a Brazilian station or
two. My Perseus rigs reveal a few more stations, but it is really slim
pickings compared to the 1980s and 1990s. That's the main reason why I
mostly DX the foreign medium wave stations now.

Have a good trip back to Montagu, and I hope it's not too tiring!

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
http://fivebelow.squarespace.com


On Sep 25, 3:55*am, John Plimmer wrote:
Thanks to Bob Dobbs and RHF for the heads up on HRO. My son took me
there yesterday, it's a small store in a very downmarket area.
Cluttered with merchandise that is not marked it was difficult to see
anything - not like the lovely Fry's at all, so I was a bit
disappointed and only came away with a Monitoring times and QST.

Since I got on the Delta airliner I was surprised to find everything
in the US is now in two languages!!! even the food and other packaging
is in two languages. Looks like when my grandson goes to school he
will have to learn Spanish??!!

I had another long sweep on SW but found very little, just a few
Spanish stations and two hot gospelers in English.

AM MW is quite exciting for this bush baby as many of the stations I
hear so weakly in Africa I can now hear clearly on my ultralight
Grundig G8 Traveller II. Have now got ten states on MW, but am awed
that some fella's have all the 48 states and some even logged 700 AM
MW stations = quite amazing and really hard work and a lot of skill
and patience. I salute these DXer's for their great achievements.

Well off home again on Tuesday and the 32 hours door to door
travelling is not to be looked forward to.

Have fun and good DX to all

JP in Atlanta