KONG36 DX-pedition in Progress!

Twice every autumn, the KONG crew, OJ Sagdahl, Ole Forr, TJ Bråtveit and Bjarne the host, meet in Kongsfjord for antenna work, DX-ing, eating good food and drinking good beer, not necessarily in that order.

This mini-DXpediton will last from Thursday, September 6 to Sunday (or rather Monday morning). Antenna works today.  OJ and Ole took on the challenging task of erecting the 1000-metre experimental beverage at Mount Loran, together with the necessary hardware and remote control setup.

In-house setup is challenging as well, with four DX-ers wanting continous access to four beverage antennas. But we've done this a few times before (35 to be exact), so it's mostly routine.

While OJ and Ole were away, I replaced supports for the 340-degrees beverage, and also elevated it. Stunning September weather. The picture below is looking southwest from near the end point of the 340 beverage. Nice, huh? Today was calm, sunny, maximum of 13 Celsius.

Afternoon conditions were relatively uninspiring, except Philippines showed up on somewhat unusual frequencies, like 1440.

As always (almost) on the first day, the host tries to impress the gang with home-made fish gratin, and they say they approve. It's an easy dish with super-quality haddock, bacon, macaroni, chopped carrots, fresh ginger, onion and chopped leak in basic white sauce. Generous amounts of nutmeg for flavour.  Baked for 45 minutes at 200 Celsius. For dessert we enjoyed Tartufo, a delicious Italian-style chocolate mousse.

We tested a few beers: Dead Cat double IPA from Graff in Tromsø (approved), Twine Ball double IPA from Kansas (approved), and Stockholm Style IPA from Sweden (not approved). And as always, Amaretto is approved.