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.