The NBD io group organizes a Co-ordinated LIstening Event (CLE) every month. As a huge fan of something that is a bit of a contest, a bit of a personal challenge, I like these a lot. More importantly they help me to improve my set-up which is why I try to participate most months.
CLE’s always have a certain goal. In CLE299 for example, you had to pick an azimuth and try to receive as much beacons along that line. CLE311 required you had to “build a pyramid”. And CLE309 was all about logging up to 8 stations from each Maidenhead square. In this one, CLE327, the aim was to select 10 frequencies ahead of the event and then log as much beacons as possible.
So the making the right selection was critical. Obviously you do that by checking on which frequency you logged the largest number of different beacons in the past, ideally beacons that you have a fair change of logging again. But I just moved to a new QTH, and worse, I only have a loop pointing 90/270 degrees at my disposal, whereas in the past I switched antenna directions for an optimal result.
My Results
But hey… all for the fun of it. In the table below you can see my selection and my results. Now I can only receive these weak signals at my noisy QTH using Pskov, a software tool that basically tries to detect cyclic signals. If it recognizes one, it cuts an SDR recording (I used recordings of an hour) in pieces of exactly that cycle length and stacks them on top of one another to improve S/N ratio. To limit the amount of data processing I listened between 299 and 420 kHz only.
The previous event of a similar nature was CLE306 two years ago when the aim was to log as many NDBs on 8 preselected frequencies. Quite a few NDBs closed down since, so we were allowed to pick 10 frequencies this time. But obviously the CLE306 results provided a good starting point.
As you can see in the table above I managed to log 32 stations in CLE306. Based on my results I made the following selection for the new event:
– Two frequencies, 348 and 330 disappointed me in CLE306 big time. So I excluded them for CLE327.
– Two frequencies, 351 and 410 were not selected in CLE306, but during that event I logged 5 NDBs. So I included them in CLE327.
– And to bring the selection to 10 frequencies I added 316 and 368 as I logged quite a few NDBs on these frequencies in the past.
Again, note that the number of logs in the past are not the only number to go by. Some logs are really rare or once off UNIDs. Some NDBs are located at a larger distances to the north or south, which given high solar activity right now or my limitations with the antenna orientation might provide a difficult catch.
My result in CLE327 was 33 beacons in total. With 3.3 NDBs per frequency quite a bit lower than in CLE306 which resulted in 4 NDBs per frequency. Conditions in that one, which was held in July, were not much better, so I blame my fixed antenna direction for that.
In hindsight, if I had picked the right frequencies, I could have scored 40. So the selection was not too bad. My newly selected 397 let me down with only one log for unknown reasons. Conditions to the Balkan were not bad, as were conditions to the UK and south of France. Maybe I should replace it with 380 next time.
For reference: the average score for participants from Europe was 43, with the top dog scoring 65!
A nice suprise from Iran
And to finish it off. During the event I received this nice signal from Iran. NDB Uromiyeh, almost 3500 km distance:
