This Sunday afternoon I was at the dike again with just with the Belka. Condx were just getting odd again (SFI=100, A=19, K=1) and there wasn't a lot of DX to hear. I still wanted to check the IBP beacon reception with the whip anyway (that didn't really work well last time), so I did just that. I didn't really expect much, also because 5 hours before sunset is generally not the greatest time for hardcore DX. IIBP beacons heard:
Around 14:00 UTC:
18 MHz
Venezuela, NYC, Canada, California, Japan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Siberia, South Africa, Kenya, Israel.
14 MHz
Canada, California, Hawaii (vy weak), Japan, Siberia, Sri Lanka, Israel, Finland (weak), Azores, Venezuela, NYC.
One hour later:
18 MHz:
Japan (loud!), Siberia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Israel, Finland, Azores, Peru (early!), NYC, California.
14 MHz
Thunderstorm closing in, had to pack up.
WWVH was 90% readable on 15 MHz all the time, WWV Colorado audible but barely readable. AUS/NZ beacons were missing but I heard Australian VOLMET on 11397.
Not all of the beacons were clearly readable, for example I got only some signal debris from the Hawaiian beacon, but still...this is a small whip with a tiny little bit of radio at one end, receiving so many of these 100W signals radiated by omnidirectional vertical antennas from all over the world.
You probably know that the nearby (200') ocean boosts the signals quite a bit and part of the exercise today was to get a feeling about the difference to my evening walks pretty much outside of the 10 Lambda saltwater enhancement zone, but on these walks I regularly pick up e.g. the Australian IBP beacon, with most of the above being present as well (with some elevated/undisturbed condx of course).
One reason why - of all small portables - the Belka can really pull this off is that it's a quiet radio, another one is the true CW mode: The 300Hz filter is miles above the 500 Hz filter settings of the other portables, which turned out to be more of a 1kHz filter with a pronounced peak and such wide shoulders that you can still get intelligible audio out of a broadcast station with it. The 300 Hz filter is as narrow as it says on the tin and as steep as a filter should be, so you get the full SNR benefit of CW reception to dig the beacons out of the noise.