KONG53 Day Five - Mostly The Dominants

Excellent signal levels overnight and well into the day. Unfortnately, few if any of the frequencies monitored so far have many stations of interest. It's quite typical to have a "bad" night after a good one. That said, signal levels were high, and someone less experienced with MW DX-ing than us would surely have a night and day to remember.

There was however a good opening towards Japan and the Pacific around 10z. I haven't checked into that yet.

Around noon we went out to do some maintenance on the beverages and prepare them for a long, cold, wet, snowy, windy winter season.

So, what's more to say? Oh yes, in the afternoon we drove to Berlevåg to shower off some dirt and had a nice swim in the public swimming pool, including a very pleasant stay in their large, warm bubble bath.

Some may wonder about our alt-Loran site. Below is a photo of the starting point, with a Zarges metal case to the left packed in tarpaulin (a NUC, SSD, Perseus, 4/5G modem and Bodnar GPS plus the transformer are inside). Then obviously the antenna reel, and to the right a 4/5G antenna mounted on a folded tripod. The small, boggy pond acts as a perfect grounding.

alt-Loran setup

The dinner today was a first in KONG history: Home-made pizza! OJ has made pizza for ages, and knows his craft. We ended up with three sourdough pizzas with various toppings, and one in reserve for tomorrow's lunch. Before that we started off with Crostini with cured reindeer beef and caramelised onion on toast. Somewhat "meh" to us. It wasn't bad but lacked that little extra taste. The pizza was so much that we decided to leave the dessert for another day.

Tuesday evening brought another aurora to our south The light in the foreground comes from the living room - our DX quarters.

As forecasted, the wind eased off a lot and it was mostly dry with temperatures just below the 10 Celsius mark. In one way, amazing. But a sign of warmer times to come. The forecast for the days ahead is mild, dry and somewhat windy. Current weather in Kongsfjord is always visible on the top right corner.

When I post this it will be Wednesday. Another night with good signals. But the K index is rising, likely due to effects from CH1405. How it impacts DX remains to be seen.

A bit blurry morning photo today, from 2h 15 min before sunrise. Today we will have a guest for dinner! More on that in tomorrow's blogpost.

KONG53 Day Four - Amazing Wind Levels - And Signal Levels!

 We can indeed confirm that the alt-Loran beverage is healthy and producing lots of interesting DX. But so did our beverages at the KONG-HQ! The night and day of the 19th produced good DX on all three antennas. The alt-Loran beverage was especially productive on the lower end of the MW band, since high ambient RF noise levels at the KONG-HQ make reception gradually worse below 800 kHz. The alt-Loran "scraping the surface of the SSD" gave us KARI-WA 550, WOW-NE 590, WREY-MN + KHOW-CO 630, KLTT-CO 670, KPOF-CO + KMTT-WA 910, KQMS-AZ 940, KNLV-NE 1060, KMSD-SD 1510 to name just a few.

The 900-metre beverage should be quite directive. But propagation favoured basically everything. On 1350 I was very surprised to hear a WEGA-PR id seconds after KSRO-CA. That's a 46-degree bearing difference!

The 340 beverage "back home" at the KONG-HQ was very productive as well but more pointed towards the target area, North America's western part. A frequency that requires a lot more investigation is 1610! It was literally swarming with TIS stations all through the night. WQPW217 The Makah Tribal Council Emergency AM Radio Station, Neah Bay, WA and WRMQ374 Snowville UT were positively identified, along with Travis AFB Information Radio, Travis AFB CA on 1710. Not bad for 10 watts!

More on the domestic scene is Ole's debut as a sourdough bread baker. He's done extremely well, and here is from his second batch:

Proper bread. Very proper bread

Dinner! For starters we had salmon tartare, a mix of fresh and smoked salmon placed on roasted loafs of bread and sour cream. Main course was also "fishy" - fried and then baked cod loins with Sriracha, root vegetables and pancetta. For dessert we had chocolate pudding with vanilla sauce. A Kim Crawford white wine went well with the fish. For the dessert we had a taste of grappa.

Monday was rainy and windy. Especially towards evening and eaerly night when wind gusts reached 28 m/s and precipitation increased a lot. Temperatures increased steadily throughout the day, peaking at above 10 Celsius just as the wind and rain levels maximised.

As usual, here's the image from Tuesday morning, half an hour before sunrise. The wind has gradually decreased to a more pleasant 10-15 m/s and it seems to dry up for a few days now. Looking at tonight's Yaslog images as well as listening live, we have a lot of stations to hunt for.

KONG53 Day Three - alt-Loran Resolved!

The previous night and day was not bad at all. It started off early on with logs like WDZY-VA 1290, WFIF-CT 1500 and WHGT-MD 1590, peaking at 05z with lots of west or near-west coast stations, most notably KNBR-CA 680, KALL-UT 700, KCBS-CA 740, KABC-CA 790, KRLV-NV 920, KWSW-CA 980, KRSK-OR 1080, KJJC-UT 1230 and several others. In the afternoon a few New Zealand stations showed up like Newstalk ZB-1026 and 1035, RNZ National-1143 and a strong signal from Te Upoko o Te Ika 1161. 

 As mentioned in yesterday's blogpost, the alt-Loran 1000-metre beverage site was a major disappointment when we tested the signal levels after deploying the antenna yesterday. We couldn't pinpoint the cause, although we knew that a new installment nearby had the potential of disturbing reception. That was something we could do nothing about. What we could do was to check our own equipment. First and foremost: Could it be a faulty transformer? The DX-Engineering transformer was quite old, so we decided to test one of our brand new transformers from Jan, OK2ZAW.

And that did the trick! Obviously the DX-Engineering transformer was not up to the task any more. With the new transformer, we see a noise floor of typically -135 dBm or lower. Now, we're hoping that propagation will stay good, with lots of catches from the eastern part of North America.

Today's hero

With a noise floor like that a preamp would have come in handy during sunrise and sun up conditions. Unfortunately, we have an NDB nearby on 399 booming in with -27 dBm, and on the other end of the range just below 1700 a marine info station at a similar signal level. Those combined will cause intermodulation and could also cause saturation if the antenna input is amplified.

Before we drove to alt-Loran, I did a brief antenna inspection. There were some issues to sort out, but they can wait for better (drier) weather. The first picture below is from the end point of one of the dual-340 beverages. the second is from - well - somewhere nearby

.

Dinner: Sausages! But not just any sausages, they were locally produced near Ole's home town. We had four types: Frankfurter, Umami, Garlic and Chorizo. Served with a home-made paste of mashed potatoes, regionally grown. We enjoyded a Scarpa Piemonte red wine with the sausages. For dessert, Bjarne's blueberry (bilberry) pie, made from super-local bilberries (literally from just outside the front door). Served with vanilla sauce and Amaretto.

And Ole finished his first sourdough bread, with success!

Bilberry pie

Monday morning update:

Image taken at 05:26, 10 minutes before sunrise. Windy overnight, and milder so most of the snow is gone. But it's going to be a rainy day.

Good conditions overnight, and alt-Loran seems to be very much in business, judging from the Jaguar Yaslog created at the remote PC. More details in my next blogpost.

KONG53 - Day Two

Friday night's aurora display didn't do too much harm on propagation overnight as signal levels were quite strong from midnight UTC to around 09, peaking around 04.

At around 11z we drove off to alt-Loran to erect the 1000-metre beverage. It all went well, but when we checked the signal levels we disovered huge RFI on large parts of the MW band. Why??? We do know that a new antenna site has been erected. nearby. Could it be the reason? We let the recording start and hoped for the best. However, when checking in via remote control on Sunday morning the RFI was still present.

Weather was reasonably nice while we were there, but the last half hour was demanding to say the least, with increased wind and wet sleet. I suppose the photo below on the drive back doesn't quite illustrate how bad the weather was.

Leaving alt-Loran

Not much activity the rest of the day. We did note 4RO-990 Rockhampton early afternoon when the Chinese were silent for a couple of seconds. Apart from that, not a lot that could penetrate the massive signal levels from China.

But OJ made a fantastic sourdough bread! He's black belt sourdough baker, and there's a reason why. Look at this;

Later in the evening we had salmon loins with bacon, tagliatelle with pesto and parmesan cheese. Who could resist a good riesling with this meal! For dessert we had real vanilla ice cream, Amaretto and a touch of Grappa. The salmon was the lone local ingredient in this meal, but also the main one.

Salmon, bacon and tagliatelle with pesto

For those who wonder how our super.thin beverage antenna wires are doing: Excellent! So far. The fierce winter storms haven't arrived yet.

Weather: Rainy! And sleet. 1-3 degrees Ceslius. Quite windy as well. Close to zero in the evening, but expected a little bit higher later on Sunday with less wind and precipitation.

Sunday morning update:

Just above freezing when I took the picture below after waking up at 04:40, sunrise still an hour away.

More important though, the band (except at alt-Loran) isn't bad at all. Varying signal levels which is normal during disturbed conditions, but "red is good". Late evening brought a few unusal ones, presumably still on day power. Such as WDZY-VA 1290 at 23:30.

During daylight we'll drive to the alt-Loran site and see what we can do to reduce the RFI levels. We do know a bit more now about the RF activity of the antenna site mentioned earlier. There may be ways to reduce the impact.

KONG53 - Day One (Friday)

Travel day! Ole had to get up at 03 local to catch the train to Oslo Airport. OJ quite a bit later but still early, for his Trondheim-Oslo flight. They were both on the Airbus A320 to Kirkenes at 09. A lot easier for me - I left home at 13:45 to pick them up at the Varangerbotn bus terminal. Norway may not be a large country, but it's long!

After a brief pit stop to pick up some fresh and still warm fish cakes (fish balls only they're fried) we arrived at the KONG-HQ a few minutes before 17.

After unpacking, we settled in with a SuperSonic Double Dry-Hopped DIPA. surely the best beer in the world.

Later on we had what some (not me!) say is the best fish gratin in the world, together with a Riesling white wine. Chocolate pudding with vanilla sauce and an Amaretto completed the meal. 

Recent logs of interest: KENO-NV 1460, KABI-KS 1560, KZQQ-TX 1560, KNTH-TX 1070.

Early to bed after a long day. Before that, I went outdoor and saw a hefty aurora to our south. A nice reflection in my car's roof.

The Aurora didn't hamper reception that much, we had reasonably good signal levels on the 340 beverage from North America from 00z to 06, peaking around 04.

Today is Saturday morning, gale force winds and scattered rain showers. Around lunchtime we'll be going to the alt-Loran site to deploy the 1000-metre beverage and the PC and SDR. 

KONG53 Minus Five Days

I had a brief visit to the KONG-HQ on Saturday and Sunday. All of a sudden, after an extraordinary mild September and early October, winter struck. It may look tranquil and nice on the photo below taken at the highest part of the mountain crossing. But to the west (left) loomed dark clouds with snow and hail showers, and the black tarmac was actually icy - blind ice as we call it. I met a German campervan on the way, They drove with great care, contrary to what many other foreign tourists do in the winter season. I had my winter tyres on last Wednesday.

Appearances can be deceiving...

After arriving at the KONG-HQ, the rest of the day was spent indoor. There were a few chores waiting - I had brought with me most of the food and beverages we need for the DX-pedition that start next Friday - and my readers will know that we eat a lot. I also had to replace a PC that wasn't performing as it should. That, and a software issue turned out to take a lot longer than I expected. Which probably was to be expeced....

Of course, I couldn't resist the temptation to make a proper KONG-HQ dinner, with a fried and baked salmon loin and tagliatelle with proper pesto. I had half a bottle of a Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc left after Ole and OJ three weeks ago. A white wine from Down Under is never wrong!

Windy with showers throughout the rest of the day, but calming a little bit in the late evening. I stood at the front door a couple of minutes to try and capture the mood. I'm not sure if I succeeded, but this is what my mobile phone camera saw:

Blustery Saturday evening at the KONG-HQ

Temperatures were low, but luckily stayed just north of the zero mark. I have a somewhat complicated water delivery system - a part of it is on the ground and as we know, water tend to freeze.

Saturday was my planned outdoor day, and the weather had improved quite a bit with less wind, fewer snow showers and a bit "warmer" - if you can call +2.5 Celsius that.

Calm Sunday morning at the KONG-HQ

Road conditions were even worse than Saturday though. The main tasks was to inspect the new, ultra-slim wires after we had 27 m/s wind gusts on Thursday. All is well. I  also set up physical markers for the alt-Loran beverage antenna. It's very easy to stray off course when walking the wire out, especially when the target point is out of sight. Moving the wire back into its path is time consuming - we've done that a few times. Yes, we do use GPS but hand-held units do lack some accuracy and you tend to forget to check. Two weeks ago I walked the path and sprayed red paint on rocks along the way. Today I supplemented with fibreglass rods that are easier to see and navigate by from a distance.

Inspecting antennas at the KONG-HQ. A dense snow shower moving in from the north.

Leading the way - marking the antenna path at alt-Loran

If all goes well, the next post will be on Friday October 16th!