KONG49 - Day Four

 Another beautiful day in the Arctic! Sunny and clear skies, a light breeze early in the day, then calm. Maximum temperature above 10 degrees Celsius.

And some DX! Yesterday evening at 21 UTC there was an opening towards Japan shortly after NHK-2 started another day of broadcasting. Noteworthy was the 1-kW Yonago relay station of JOLZ Tottori on 1521. Quite good signal levels on the 340 beverage at the KONG-HQ, and this afternoon we collected the IQ recordings from our on-ground beverage at Loran D. Weak signals, but low noise floor. Unfortunately occasional RFI from what we assume is a nearby substation.

Today, we elevated the beverage to an average of 120 cm, and made a grounding for the end point. It made an instant effect on the JIX index of Jaguar and a very noticeable increase in signal levels. It will be interesting to see what the coming night brings. This development in the X-Ray Flux levels may not be all that promising:

We do observe the effect of a slightly more northerly direction (up from 306 to 312 degrees). More westerly stations seem to be dominant. But we've only scanned one night. Even at the Smøla HQ, western stations dominated last night. So, things may change.

To describe the noise better, here is an audio clip from 920 on Loran D. The noise starts a few seconds after the full hour, and during a CFRY ID.

CFRY and noise

Early in the day I went out to catch a bit of the nice weather. Pictures below.

Later on, OJ went for his daily hike to the Veines lighthouse (photo below), while I did a 9.4-km jog (track log below below).

Veines Lighthouse (photo: OJ Sagdahl)

Bjarnes run track (source: Polar)

As mentioned earlier, we later drove to the Loran D site to elevate the wire, and make a proper termination at the far end. Pictured below is OJ walking down to the far end of the beverage.

So, dinner's next!  We had reindeer shanks in Barolo yesterday. Today we took the leftovers, added chopped root vegetables, garlic and leak, and transformed it into a meat soup, Barolo style. But first, for appetizers we had Salmon Tartare, made up from equal parts of fresh and smoked salmon. Kim Crawford was the natural white wine for the Tartare, and a Côte du Rhône red wine for the main course. We decided to postpone dessert, since there is only so much one can eat.