KONG-HQ End of MW Season (Seriously!)

Two weeks have passed since my last visit to the KONG HQ. April so far has been amazing. Sunny. Calm. Dry. Warm (relatively speaking). A stark contrast to April last year.  And it came with surprising DX! Most years, little of interest is heard in April, due to the increased amount of daylight on the polar signal paths. Imagine our surprise when 500-watt (assuming they were on day power with all the thunder and tornado warnings) KCII Washington IA was literally blasting away on 1380 on the 18th! A new log for me.

To illustrate the signal path relative to the greyline (or, more precise, the sunset line) I made a video of WRTO's full-hour ID at 02:01 UTC. Sunrise came at 01:35 here and trans-polar signals lasted for another four hours.

Part of Saturday was spent outdoor in the sun, as I needed to collect the remains of the broken western part of the staggered 340-beverage. The past few weeks only the 310 beverage has been active. Below a few photos from the outdoor activity.

KONG-HQ - few shades of green so far

Antenna supports for the 340-degrees beverage

Last snow (maybe?)

At midnight I took a few photos to illustrate how it looks 4 weeks before the midnight sun arrives.

Midnight view (south)

Midnight view (north)

Sunday was another day with clear skies. But MW propagation had collapsed so the last remaining beverage was dismantled, and with that, the end of the 2025-2026 MW season. Seriously!

So, preparations for the upcoming FM season have begun. Two FM antennas will be used, one beamed to the Northwest (Iceland. Greenland. Canada???). The other pointing eastwards (Siberia. Kasakhstan? Mongolia?? China???). We plan to use several  SDRPlay SDRs, which should be up and running by late May.

Below a couple of images from Sunday.

Heading: 310!

KONG-HQ