The problem with the Pacific HF feed is similar to the Atlantic - too many frequencies to cover and no consistent usage pattern.
The left channel freqs (5574 8843 11282) cover the area between the US west coast and the Hawaiian islands. 90% of the traffic you hear on those freqs will either be going to or coming from Hawaii. The other 10% is US <> NZ / AUS traffic.
The right channel freqs (5667 (note
NOT 5677) 8915 10048) cover the Pacific area from 150W westwards, ie. SFO working Asian and Japanese traffic from 150W to the Tokyo FIR boundary around 165E. Tokyo also works these frequencies as well, but generally you won't hear both SFO and Tokyo on the same freqs.
From my experiences of listening to this area it is impossible to use 'set' frequencies on the Pacific as they chop and change them so often. As an example of some recent listening sessions to the North Pacific between 10 and 1600z the primary freqs in use were :
Day 1 : Tokyo 5667, SFO 5628
Day 2 : Tokyo 2932, SFO 5667
Day 3 : Tokyo 5628, SFO 6655
Day 4 : Tokyo 6655, SFO 5628
Day 5 : Tokyo 5628, SFO 5667
If the propagation is having a bad day you will find they all change again with 6655 used more and SFO up on 8915 and 8951, maybe even 10048. It really is impossible to get good results from fixed freqs in this area
.
As much as I like listening to Tokyo traffic the freqs used are too unpredictable and you end up with hours of nothing. I think that the right channel would produce better results if it were set to 5547 early on, then 6673 and 11282 late afternoon/evening utc. 11282 is really used more for the Asian traffic than it is for the Hawaiian stuff. 8843 is consistently busy from around 18z to 03z when they drop back down to 5574 unless the propagation is having an off day.
