The First Sheigra Medium Wave DX-pedition
By John Faulkner
The first visit to Sheigra represented a milestone in high latitude DXing in the UK. It opened the door to a new world of DX possibilities, which UK DXers had thought could never be achieved. We need to go back in time a little for this. 1985 to be precise, from October 3rd to October 12th.
For years, DXers across the UK had read about the exotic medium wave DX which was possible at higher latitudes in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia and had accepted that it was probably impossible to hear the same kind of trans-polar DX because of signal absorption across the North Pole. DXers at higher latitudes had less of the problems associated with absorption. Not only could they hear exotic medium wave stations from the west coast of the USA and Canada, but also from Japan, Australia, New Zealand and even the Pacific Islands!
Until 1985, such reception had never graced the medium wave band in the UK, though a few of the higher powered west coast stations had made it through in previous solar minima, including 640 KFI Los Angeles CA, 1000 KOMO Seattle WA, 1070 KNX Los Angeles CA, 1090 KING Seattle WA and 1410 CFUN Vancouver BC.
DXers in Scandinavia made use of large directional antennas called 'beverage antennas' which could be stretched out many hundreds of metres across the land and through forests. Such large antennae had never really been tried in earnest in the UK, other than at places like the BBC Monitoring Service in Reading. The more we thought about it, the more we wanted to find suitable locations and run out such antennas to see if we could come close to hearing what the Scandinavians were hearing.
If we were to attempt this in the UK, where should we go? The general consensus was 'as far north as possible', and for good reason. The 'scientists' among us had always stated that trans-polar reception on the medium wave band would *never* be possible in the UK due to the polar absorption. So what if we were to travel as far north as possible in the UK? How about the north of Scotland? Surely this would be sufficiently northerly to minimise the absorption and achieve our goals.
In October 1985, four intrepid DXers made the long journey north, to the beautiful Highland region of Scotland and near Cape Wrath in the north-west corner. Ian Kelly, John Faulkner, Mark Hattam and David Hyams travelled hundreds of miles purely to see if they could break the records. Mark had found a holiday cottage in the crofting village of Sheigra (population 12) just a few miles from the Cape. There was sufficient room to erect beverage antennae in several directions. Several other locations were also considered but this one seemed to fit as many of the criteria as possible for our purposes, i.e. sufficient farmland in the required directions, no nearby roads, etc., however, It was impossible to tell for certain just how suitable this location was until we had seen it for ourselves as this was our first visit to the area.
Sheigra: Gaelic for "Peaceful Valley"
The journey seemed to take for ever as the roads above Inverness were mostly single track in those days and not at all straight. Some 120 miles of these roads had to be negotiated in order to reach our destination. It was after midnight when we arrived and it was cold and dark and seemingly unwelcoming as we entered the damp holiday cottage in the middle of nowhere. It was like going back in time 50 years. The cottage was very old and the walls were half a metre thick so as to provide insulation from the extreme weather, which can often be experienced up there. The wood-panelled walls and linoleum covered floors were also something of a shock. Bits of carpets attempted to cover the floor and the heating was coal-fired. All the furniture and kitchen equipment seemed to be as old as the hills outside! There were no modern facilities such as a microwave or dishwasher. The water supply was brown due to the peat hills and it had a strange odour. We decided to boil it first before drinking it but we discovered it made an excellent cup of tea! What were we letting ourselves in for?
The cottage
Daybreak soon arrived and we caught our first glimpse of the terrain around us. It was a near-mountainous landscape. Dramatic cliffs fell away into the sea and we were concerned that it was wholly inappropriate for our purposes. Indeed we had to negotiate some very uneven terrain in order to erect the antennas. Mark had prepared bamboo canes on which the aerials were to be mounted. These were mostly 1.5m in length and had a small groove cut across one end and with some sticky tape wrapped around the top to prevent splitting. This formed a good grip for the wire which was pushed a few mm into the groove. This simple design was very successful and hasn't really changed to this day. The bamboo canes were pushed into the soft, boggy terrain and generally stayed put, albeit with some minor re-arrangement from the local sheep.
The beach at Sheigra
Beverage termination was made using variable resistors, generally set to around 600 ohms. This needed checking on a daily basis and minor adjustment was sometimes necessary. The ground provided an excellent earth due to its saturated, boggy nature. Setting up the final termination value was done using precision timing with someone sat at the dials and another setting the resistor to different values each minute. We did not have mobile phones or walkie talkies in those days.
A section of the north-east / south-west beverage
Sheigra is remote. We were well away from city life and were slightly surprised to learn that there were no local amenities in the village. There was a post office in the neighbouring village of Balchrick at the top of the hill and a small general store four miles away in Kinlochbervie (population 200) which only opened for a few hours each day. All other services such as a bank and a library seemed to be provided by a van which drove into the village, offering a different service with each visit. Moving to more important things – the nearest public house was four miles away. This was the Kinlochbervie Hotel. Another hostelry was located at Rhiconich, some eight miles away.
The name "Sheigra" is Gaelic for "peaceful valley" and that's exactly what it was, at least when the sun was out! At other times we found the power would occasionally trip out when the weather became windy or when a storm was close by. It wasn’t unusual to be sitting in the hotel in darkness either. We were well and truly out in the wilds, exposed to all the elements. The climate in this part of the UK is such that you can literally experience four seasons of weather in just a few hours, but it was great fun and that little holiday cottage proved to be a very pleasant, homely kind of place and the record-breaking DX which followed proved to be more spectacular than we could have wished!
Our first night of listening was met with disturbed geomagnetic conditions. The planetary K indices had seemingly shot through the roof and the previous daily A indices were also higher than we would have wished. Brazil dominated the DX channels across medium wave. Signals were very strong in some cases audible before 2200 hours GMT. These signals gradually faded away as the night went on. The band was virtually devoid of transatlantic DX by 0200, though an interesting signal on 820 kHz appeared around this time which out to be WBAP in Fort Worth TX. How odd – WBAP is regarded as the sort of station you would normally associate with very good conditions and would appear when the band was full of other North American signals, yet it was possibly the only transatlantic signal on the band at the time and certainly the only one from North America.
Daybreak came on the second day and we continued to construct our beverage antennas across the farmland. Approximately 300 metres of wire was run out to the north-west. Another 700 metres was run out to the north-east. This one formed a beverage for the far-east during the daytime and was un-terminated at night to make it bi-directional so it would serve as our South American antenna. It was not possible to have a 'proper' South American beverage because of the nearby farm buildings and homes in that direction. A shorter beverage was run out to the west for Central America and the Caribbean and finally a wire fence was utilised to form a northerly beverage for Alaska. A little optimistic perhaps but you never know!
We were now well prepared for our DX pursuits. Cassette tape recorders
were ready to record our reception and we settled down to listen by the
middle of the evening. Once again, by 2200 hours we were receiving what
can only be described as ‘powerhouse’ signals from Brazil
and a solitary North American signal, CJYQ in St Johns NL on 930 kHz.
Conditions were still very unsettled and, like the previous night, signals
began to take a dive after an hour or more. But while this was very disappointing
we realised that reception was somehow very ‘different’ to
home and our excellent reception of Brazilian stations, some of which
were at near-local strength, was rather unusual. We realised there was
potential for something impressive if only the conditions would improve.
Thankfully, we did not have to wait much longer for this.
The time was approaching 04:00 and once again we were scratching our heads
with disbelief that the band had died once more. Transatlantic DX was
virtually non-existent and we were all very close to pulling the plugs
at this point but we suddenly noticed that there was a second station
on 930. Minutes earlier we could only hear CFBC in St John, New Brunswick
but this was far more interesting. The station appeared to be North American
and was discussing matters in Alberta. We dismissed this as ‘just
CJYQ’ but seconds later were amazed to hear the signal quickly lift
from being weak to S9+50dB on the Trio 9R59D display! Next came a weather
report giving out –4 degrees (surely a little cold for St Johns?)
and a time check for six hours behind GMT, which ruled out CJYQ. At 04:00
we were speechless as we were treated to an ID “This is 9-30 CJCA
Edmonton”. A UK first! Scarcely able to believe our ears we tuned
around and discovered that the whole of the medium wave band had suddenly
become alive with strong signals from the Canadian Prairies! Such reception
was unheard of in the UK. Never before had UK DXers been treated to such
a barrage of ‘first time’ signals. But the best was yet to
come. Almost an hour later an unusual signal was detected on 680kHz. It
was buried in heavy European splatter from adjacent channels and therefore
not particularly easy to hear, but the language sounded like Eskimo. Baffled,
we scratched our heads some more and wondered who could be carrying a
broadcast in the Eskimo language on 860. Surely not Alaska? It couldn’t
be. But who else? The time was approaching the top of the hour and the
signal had peaked up a little. With only a few seconds to go for a possible
identification it had started to dip down as is often the case as the
top-of-the-hour approaches. We were counting the seconds, hoping this
would not fade out completely. At last, the top of the hour was upon us
and the language changed from Eskimo to English and a male voice announced
something which sounded like “…radio… K??? … Barrow”.
Scarcely able to believe our ears that this was a K call and not being
entirely sure of what we had heard we played the tape back and heard the
words which were to mark a milestone in British DX history, “Top
of the world radio, KBRW Barrow”! We had done it! The first recorded
Alaskan reception in the UK! Those scientists among us had said it could
not be done and we had shown that it was indeed possible! From that moment
we knew we were in for a real DX treat.
Transatlantic channels were opening up everywhere and North American stations dominated, but nothing we heard sounded familiar to us. Instead of hearing the news from WINS or CFRB on 1010 we had an English CBC station. 790, 940, 1050 and 1110 were dominated by country music. It was all rather strange and exciting. Furthermore, many signals were reaching armchair listening levels, some pinning the S meter right across into the red! To this day, I have never experienced a more surprising and stunning opening across medium wave than that night in Sheigra. We were literally re-writing DX history!
The DX Log
570 Gronlands R, Nuuk
580 ZYI776 R Globo, Recife
600 CFQC Saskatoon SK
BED76 CBS Luchiang
ZYK278 R Gaucha, Porto Alegre
HJHJ R Libertad, Barranquilla.
621 Batra, Egypt
650 KYAK Anchorage AK
Gronlands R, Quqertarsuaq
680 KBRW Barrow AK
CHFA Edmonton AB
ZYK275 R Faroupilha, Porto Alegre
710 YVKY R Capital, Caracas
740 CBX Edmonton AB
750 CJWW Saskatoon SK
BED2 CBS Minhsiung
ZYH709 R Alvorada, Brasilia
760 8RG GBC Channel 1, Georgetown (tentative)
765 ORTS Dakar, Senegal
790 CFCW Camrose AB
800 PJB Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles
820 WBAP Fort Worth TX
825 R Paradise, St Kitts
850 BED—CBS Linkou
860 ZYJ459 R Mundial, Rio de Janeiro
2 North Americans mixing
870 HJSB Mar Caribe AM, Barranquilla
890 ZYK690 R Gazeta, Sao Paulo
900 R Barbados, Bridgetown (tentative)
920 CJCH Halifax NS
930 CJCA Edmonton AB
CJYQ St Johns NL
CFBC St John NB
CX20 R Montecarlo, Montevideo
ZYL229 R Araguari, Araguari
940 ZYJ453 R Jornal do Brasil, Rio de Janerio
950 Unidentified North American
LR3 R Belgrano, Buenos Aires
ZYL212 R Atalaia, Belo Horizonte
YVKG R Vision, Caracas
960 CFAC Calgary AB
CHNS Halifax NS (tentative)
980 ZYH707 R Nacional de Brasilia, Brasilia
981 RTA Algiers, Algeria
984 NIRT Kermanshah, Iran
1000 BED62 CBS Luchiang
ZYK522 R Record, Sao Paulo
1008 EAJ50 R Las Palmas, Canaries
1010 CBR Calgary AB
ZYH625 R O Povo, Fortaleza
1040 R Capital, Sao Paulo
1050 CFGP Grande Prairie AB
YVNQ R Mundial Caroni, Puerto Ordaz
1060 CJAM Calgary (presumed)
1070 YVMA R Mundial Zulia, Maracaibo
RFO Cayenne, French Guyana (presumed)
1090 KING Seattle WA
WBAL Baltimore MD
1100 ZYK694 R Globo, Sao Paulo
ZDK St Johns, Antigua
HJ? R Reloj, 2 possible sites
UNID. KFAX San Francisco CA ??
1110 CHQT Edmonton AB
ZYI786 R Tabajara, Joao Pessoa
YVQT R Carupano, Carupano
1120 KPNW Eugene OR
ZYK275 R Globo, Porto Alegre
1130 2 North Americans mixing
ZYJ460 R Nacional, Rio de Janeiro
1140 CKXL Calgary AB
KCSY Soldotna AK (tentative)
1190 LR9 R America, Buenos Aires
1200 WOAI San Antonio TX
YVOZ R Tiempo, Caracas
BED50 CBS Minhsiung
1210 WCAU Philadelphia
YVQZ R Anzoategui, Barcelona
YVMN R Coro, Coro
1220 CKCW Moncton NB
ZYJ458 R Globo, Rio de Janerio
1250 BEC22 CBS Linkou
1290 YVLF R Puerto Cabello, Puerto Cabello
CHRM Matane QC
1300 CJME Regina SK (presumed)
ZYH586 R Iracema, Fortaleza
1320 UNID NA. CHQM Vancouver BC ??
1355 Voice of the Saharan Arab Republic, Algeria
1380 YVJD Ondas Del Mar, Maracaibo
1400 AFRTS Hofn, Iceland (10 watts power)
1402 SPLAJBC Tripoli, Libya
1404 RTV Conakry, Guinea
1410 CFUN Vancouver BC
CIGO Port Hawkesbury NS
WPOP Hartford CT
1420 CJVR Melfort SK
1430 CJXX Grande Prairie AB
1440 UNID North and South Americans
Ras as Zawr, Saudi Arabia
1448 SPLAJBC Misurata, Libya
1470 YVFG R Vibracion, Carupano
1481 RCTV Dubai, UAE
1492 Abidjan, Ivory Coast
1500 WTOP Washington DC
1510 WMRE Boston MA
1521 BSKSA Duba, Saudi Arabia
1554 RTG Melene, Gabon
1570 TGVE R Voz Evangelica, Guatemala
1580 VOA St Johns, Antigua
1610 Caribbean Lighthouse, The Valley
Reception Summary
03-10-85: (Using only a basic aerial set-up) Good late evening South
American reception.
04-10-85: Limited east coast North America. Good South American reception
late evening.
05-10-85: Alaska and good Prairie reception mid to late morning.
06-10-85: V poor, little DX heard.
07-10-85: Mainly South American reception.
08-10-85: Excellent to South America around 05:00. Good African reception
too.
09-10-85: Very good to the far east late afternoon/early evening. Limited
Prairies and possibly Alaska mid/late morning.
10-10-85: Excellent Prairies and some west coast North America.
11-10-85: Disruption due to force 12 winds (a full hurricane as mentioned
on the BBC shipping forecast) which blew down our aerials!
12-10-85: Excellent Prairie reception and some west coast again.
Other notes worthy of mention were the fact that Brazil was the dominant feature every night during the late evenings. East coast North American reception was very scarce, no doubt due to the high A and K indices, which are listed below.
The night of the 10th/11th was ‘an experience’ to say the least as the BBC Shipping Forecast had warned of “a vigorous area of low pressure” to the north of Cape Wrath. The winds actually reached hurricane strength for a time around 01:00. Our daily evening trip to the phone box in Balchrick to get the WWV geomagnetic indices and forecast was made more tricky that evening as the winds were already reaching storm force by mid-evening. For the fun of it we actually ventured outside the cottage later that evening. It was impossible to stand upright in the howling winds and I personally had to wait several minutes before my lungs became accustomed to this before I dare go out. I can remember us walking a few metres towards the gate at the end of the footpath and having to return walking on all fours back to the door. Looking back now, it was a wonder we weren’t blown away or injured because the winds were so bad that night that they blew down one of the chimney stacks. I remember hearing it crash onto the roof of the kitchen extension. Apparently these winds were rough even by Cape Wrath standards!
Stormy weather in the mountains
The A / K indices for the period:
DATE A Index K Index
03-10-85 12 2 2 4 3 3 3 2 1
04-10-85 15 3 3 4 3 1 1 3 4
05-10-85 43 3 5 5 5 4 4 5 6
06-10-85 33 5 4 5 4 4 4 3 5
07-10-85 21 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 4
08-10-85 15 4 4 3 3 2 2 3 2
09-10-85 7 2 3 3 0 1 1 1 2
10-10-85 6 2 2 3 1 1 1 2 1
11-10-85 17 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 3
12-10-85 9 4 1 1 1 2 3 2 2
So there you have it. The UK is indeed a fine location for exotic medium wave DX! We proved that Alaska IS possible in the UK, contrary to popular belief. There is no need to travel to Scandinavia to enjoy excellent high latitude DX.
There were many other North American stations heard than those listed above but, as is always the case, so many just would not ID for us. The same can be said for South Americans too. One thing was certain, we were not letting it rest at this. More DX trips were planned and Sheigra became a regular hotspot for winter DX trips for many years, until the owners, Leona and Angus McLeod passed away in the late nineties.
Beverage Performance
Our beverage antennas performed well with good nulls on stations to the rear. As an example: According to S meter readings, powerhouse BBC Radio Scotland on 810kHz was reduced by up to 40dB in strength.
Notes
650 KYAK Anchorage AK was tentatively heard with country music. KYAK’s
format is modern country.
650 Gronlands R, Qeqertarsuaq was heard as early as 18:00 GMT.
680 CHFM Edmonton AB is part of the French CBC network.
740 CBX Edmonton AB is part of the English CBC network.
750 CJWW Saskatoon SK is now here ex 1370.
790 CFCW Camrose AB has the ID “CFCW Super Country”
930 CJCA Edmonton AB was the most consistent and strongest North American.
960 CFAC Calgary AB has a country music format.
1010 CBR Calgary AB is part of the English CBC network.
1090 KING Seattle WA was logged with talk. This has recently moved from
a rock music format.
1100 KFAX San Francisco CA – tentative logging. Noted with discussion/chat
show.
1110 CHQT Edmonton AB is on MoYL format.
1120 KPNW Eugene OR was ID’d later by their studio phone number
which was given out on air. The city name was also mentioned in a commercial.
1140 KCSY Soldotna AK: A time check for “Fourteen to ten”
was heard when playing tapes back (05:46 GMT). British Colombia would
be fourteen minutes to eleven and Alberta would have been fourteen minutes
to twelve, so this points to Alaska.
1220 ZYJ458 R Globo, Rio de Janerio, was stronger than the local BBC R3
outlet on 1215 on just about all of our aerials - not just on the beverage,
even on the car radio!
1400 AFRTS Hofn, Iceland is listed with just 10 watts and relays the Keflavik
transmitter on 1485. This was audible throughout daylight hours and had
the ID “AM 14-85 Keflavik Iceland”.
Interestingly, the day after our KBRW reception we were out in the fields and noticed that the wire fence beverage on which we had heard this had a gate half way along its length which we had over looked so this had not been functioning as a beverage at all but merely a 200m long-wire!
Receivers
* Mark Hattam: Drake TR7; Drake RV7 VFO; pre-amp
* John Faulkner: Trio 9R59D
* Ian Kelly: Yaesu FRG7, Realistic DX302
* David Hyams: Yaesu FRG7700; Yaesu FRT7700; audio filters
Aerials
* 305m beverage at 350 degrees, for the Canadian Prairies and west coast
North America
* 210m beverage at 290 degrees for the far east and central North America,
also good for Venezuela and Colombia
* 610m longwire running SW/NE, terminated in the daytime for the far-east
and unterminated at night for South America
* Two antenna phasing units and two medium wave loops
* 183m wire fence, un-terminated for KBRW reception
* Various random long-wires ranging from roughly 30m to 900m for general
listening and phasing
Comments
We received quite a few comments via the Circle's e-news service after this page was published. A selection is included below. Webmaster
Excellent feature, bringing out the excitement of this first pioneering expedition. If it weren't for this intrepid group of DXers, and the fact that they were fortunate to pick a time when westerly and northerly DX was getting through, then future of British MW DXing might have been very different, and so might my life.
I enjoyed participating in 7 DX-peditions at Sheigra between 1990 and 1996, and my experiences there were a factor in deciding to move to Clashmore in 1999, which in due course resulted in meeting my new wife, Aileen. So, this first visit to Sheigra set in motion a chain of events that had a big impact on my life - I pay tribute to those who planned, organised and participated in this event.
Thank you all!
73s
Martin
That's excellent - thanks Tony and John
My lasting memory of Kinlochbervie is going into the store mentioned by John and asking for 'The Guardian'
"Will you be wanting today's or yesterday's" the lady at the counter asked.
It seemed a bit of a no-brainer. "Today's please" I said.
"Well, you'll need to come back tomorrow then" was her reply.
Paul
Really enjoyed reading your experiences of the first visit to Sheigra! Mentioning the cottage brought back memories of my first visit in 1988 - I had never known how cold it could get inside a building. Only the DX made it worthwhile to stay out the week!
73's
John
I will echo the general opinions about the Shiegra article. Superb... Never having been there, makes ya wanna get up on holiday... This mornings condx on mw make ya wanna go up even more... or to the Faroes or Iceland......
Ken