KONG51 - Day Eight - Proton Levels Back to (Almost) Normal, And Many More Photos

Quite OK trans-polar conditions overnight towards North America. Not top-notch, but many more stations were audible than the day before, including WLEC-IL 1450, though not a rare guest. Graveyard (GY) channels can be both challenging and rewarding, so may I recommend this excellent and recently published "spooktacular" look at the history of GY channels, and how to "hunt the haunted": Digging Up the AM Radio Graveyard - Radio World. Not surprisingly it mentions our team member OJ Sagdahl as one of the world's most prolific "Graveyard diggers".

Signals from Asia/Pacific came early today, fade-up started just before 10:00, another sign that propagation is improving. Nothing much came out of it though. The 14:45 NHK-2 signoff didn't show us any stations of particular interest. The NHK-1 local ID slot at 20:00 was even worse - Romanian and Italian stations dominated the NHK-1 frequencies.

While Ole took care of the dishwash, I took a walk outside in the fair weather to take a few photos. This blogpost continues after the photo break ;-)

 

FM DX Antennas ready to fight another winter storm (and listen another summer).

310-deg beverage termination point (far end)

Dual (phased) 340-deg beverage termination point (western wire)

Dual (phased) 340-deg beverage termination point (eastern wire)

50-deg beverage termination point. Is that New Zealand we see in the distance?

My beach (pt. 1)

My beach (pt. 2)

My house (the KONG HQ)

Things that were washed ashore

Eroding sandstone cliffs

And here's what's inside the alt-Loran Zarges case deployed 30 km away: A 100-Ah battery, an Intel NUC PC, an external SSD, a Perseus SDR, a 4G/5G modem (external antenna) and a Bodnar Mini-GPS. And of course connected to a 1000-metre beverage antenna.

Alt-Loran Zarges case

At around 13 local we had our daily 60-km return trip to replace the battery and SSD at the alt-Loran site. We prolonged the trip to Berlevåg to shop fresh fried fish cakes from the local fish shop. Alas, all the fish had been sold already, so we'll have to look in the freezer for tomorrow's dinner. Trust me, we're not going to starve.

The alt-Loran didn't bring a lot more to our logs. Some "less common" ones: "Amor Radio" KMNQ-MN 1470, WWWL-LA 1350, WBAE-ME 1490, KZZJ-ND 1450 - and that's all we had time for before blog deadline. 

In the late afternoon I set another dough of bread, which will rise for 12-15 hours.

Dinner: Day Five again! We had made enough Fårikål to last for two dinners, and as they say, fårikål only gets better when stored cool. This time we chose beer, not wine, for the meat. Locally produced, the Nå9 pilsner is a playful nod to the Finnish word Noniin, a catch-all phrase meaning just about anything, and celebrates the region's rich Finnish heritage.

We had also made enough apple pie, so again that was our dessert, served with whipped cream. And a bit of Disaronno. And Grappa.