KONG51 - Day Four

Just above zero Celsius overnight, in the morning we had nice weather but a bit windy. Ionospheric weather had improved a lot since yesterday. Unfortunately, European signals had too, so there was a bit of interference especially near Romanian frequencies. Mostly easterly oriented signals overnight, and the 310 beverage was much more effective than the longer 340 beverage. Stations noted at the KONG HQ were KGBC-TX 1540 (often visible on the waterfall but most often not heard properly due to KXEL's massive signal), WWBG-NC 1470, KHEI-TX 1250 (new for me), and XEEST-DF 1440 (also new).

Overnight waterfall on the 310 beverage. Red is good.

Interestingly enough, the 1000-metre beverage at alt-Loran didn't match the 270-metre beverage at the KONG HQ this time. We will see tomorrow how it fares, usually they don't always hear the same but the alt-Loran beverage is often better.

In the afternoon two friendly radio amateurs, LA9VFA Olav and LA8AW Odd Egil came to pay a visit  after completing antenna works at Olav's QTH in Tana, 125 km away.

Later in the afternoon we had high hopes for the NHK-2 sign/off at 14:45 UTC. 1602 kHz had superb signal levels and we easily identified the 1-kW Naze repeater of  JOHC Kagosihima. Alas, not much more was heard. Little did we know what was in store for us... at 20:00 NHK-1 and private stations literally filled the band at the time of ID! At 20:55 the NHK-2 stations did likewise. Several new stations on my part, and believe me, I have a few.

Weather was mostly dry today, but as I mentioned, windy and quite cool with 2 degrees maximum temperature. The forecast for tomorrow Tuesday is much the same.

Not many photos were taken today. Here's one of two - the water level at the alt-Loran starting point is increasing. We had to move the box with the equipment out of harms way and may have to take further preventive efforts tomorrow.

Alt-Loran beverage starting point

Ah...I almost forgot about dinner! We went for Mediterranean fish ragout; chopped potatoes and carrots, onions, herbs, olive oil, chopped tomatoes and lots of haddock loins. Calles Riesling was the selected wine. For dessert: Icecream with cherry, and Disaronno.

So, does the excellent conditions to Japan indicate similar conditions to North America the coming night? Not necessarily! I have been disappointed more than once. We'll see how it went - tomorrow! But so far it's promising, as WHGT-MD 1590 was logged with excellent strength at 22:00 with their 15-kW daytime facility, 24 minutes before their sunset.