Further to the alt-Loran Noise Problem: Testing the Setup at the KONG-HQ

Another mild and windy weekend! Saturday peaked at 8 Celsius early in the evening, along with windy conditions and the odd rain shower.

Some may remember that we complained about noise at our alt-Loran location. Was the noise generated inside the Zarges box, or did it come from outside? We were quite sure that the noise didn't originate inside the box, but opinions were mixed. So, we decided to test on a different location, namely at the KONG-HQ.

I arrived a bit before local noon and my plan, among other things, was to test the alt-Loran equipment in a similar off-grid setup near the house. I already had a longwire site 30 metres from the house, so the idea was to use its sole ground rod and disconnect all the rest. I then walked out 300 metres of single-thread aluminium fence wire in a north-south direction without far-end termination - similar to our 900-metre beverage at alt-Loran. The fence wire and grounding were connected to the alt-Loran transformer and the Zarges box was placed only centimetres away from the antenna. Similar in every way to the alt-Loran setup.

Testing! The aluminium fence wire is the lower one.

I let it run for continuous IQ recording for from early evening to the next morning. I started off using the ground rod. Later on I replaced the ground rod with the radial wire ground we made at alt-Loran. A while afterwards I used the ground rod to ground the Zarges box. Again: Same procedure as when we tried to mitigate the noise problem at alt-Loran.

The setup was noise-free from beginning to end. I did several measurements of the reference signal on 399 kHz which is fully groundwave, and the noise floor on an unpopulated frequency (1615 kHz) The numbers were identical from evening to morning. Since I had Jaguar running all the time I could check the signal levels at any time. Signal level checks after IQ recordings were done with the Perseus software.

So, what remains may be a "polluted" ground condition at alt-Loran. We do know that a buried 22-kV line crosses the beverage around 800 metres from the starting point. It connects to a 22kV:230V transformer station around 120 metres to the east of the antenna. And then there is a high-level RF output to the west. So, we may have some dirty neighbours.

That said, the advise to add a grounding based on radials, and to also ground the Zarges box, did fix the noise problem at alt-Loran.

By the way,  the new fence wire antenna had excellent directional properties. I was even able to log a new country, as COPE Madrid on 999 kHz was almost totally absent, leaving the frequency to a very clear Radio Malta. Through the rest of the evening and night mostly Arabic and Greek on the 9-er frequencies, and weak signals from North America until the disturbance killed everything.

A couple of photos to end this post, first a very early morning impression, still dark. The second one with the sun at a very low azimuth was taken 90 minutes before local noon. We're just four weeks away from the Polar Night.

Early morning

Soon lunchtime

And the coming week I will make my last attempt to fix my erratic Dell Optiplex 3000.

 

KONG53 Last Day Part II

Very good signal levels overnight from around Midnight UTC. The signal path to North America was productive for more than 12 hours before gradually weakening. Alt-Loran was checked briefly from remote at early morning, excellent signal levels and noise figures were very good. Back with the 340 beverage: Listen to this one from KCAP Helena MT 950, totally obliterating 50-kW dominants KJR and WWJ. At around 12:00z many stations from the west coast were still audible, along with Alaska and Hawaii.

Most of Sunday was spent preparing for departure. We need to drive from the KONG-HQ before 05:45 tormorrow to reach OJ and Ole's bus connection to the airport at Kirkenes. I'm also preparing the site for winter, which means disconnecting the water supply that comes from a natural spring 250 metres uphill. While there, I took this photo.

KONG-HQ from above

Still quite windy as you can see on the bay. And still very mild for the season, 7-8 Celsius. 12-15 m/s wind from the southwest.

At 13:00 we drove back to alt-Loran for the last time this year, and finished our business there. On the last day of our KONG DXpeditions we choose to eat out. When we were done at alt-Loran we drove to the excellent Restaurant Oliver in Berlevåg. As they say in commercials: Don't take my word for it. Check the video link (thanks Jim).

Alt-Loran going info hibernation for 51 weeks.

After returning to "base camp" we downloaded the IQ files from the past night. Most frequencies do indeed appear to be free from the noise we reported earlier.

As for the alt-Loran noise issues, I plan to try to replicate any possible inside-the-box noise source in one of the coming weekends at the KONG-HQ. I may not be able to succeed since the noise floor is higher here than at alt-Loran. So there is a risk that any noise will be masked by ambient noise. We'll see.

So, there we are!. The weather forecast for tomorrow is 6-8 Celsius and less windy than today.

KONG53 Last Day, Part I - Update on Noise Problem

Amazing how time flies when you're having fun! This is our last full day at the KONG-HQ. Tomorrow, Monday morning we'll be leaving the site. I will return to my work as area planner in Vadsø, 170 km away. Ole and OJ have a long travel ahead of them. But the beverages at the KONG-HQ will continue to run. 

But the alt-Loran beverage will not. Sunday is time to reel in the antenna and move the Zarges box back to KONG-HQ. During the DX-pedition it has given us some challenges - and a surprising solution.

Notes on RFI - pt. 2: 

Many thanks to those who commented on our noise issue - in the blog comments and in private emails. What is absolutely certain is that the noise did not come from within the Zarges box. We would not have had a quiet spectrum with the antenna disconnected if that was the case. One advise we got from Thomas Berner was to replace the rod-based grounding with radials. On Saturday we laid out four radial wires on the ground in a (roughly) star-shaped pattern, connected all to each other and connected them to the transformer. It did indeed help. The noise level was reduced, but not eliminated. Then an idea came up: What if we ground the Zarges case? So, we used the old ground-rod solution and connected it to the aluminium case, and yes! Noise almost gone! Remaining at lower levels on some frequencies, but for the most part eliminated. We're quite uncertain about the physics behind this.

A check late on Saturday evening confirmed that the band was really quiet. It was very satisfying to see CBC-1230 barely making a small peak in Jaguar, yet almost 100% readable. Fingers crossed for another quiet night on the sun.

Despite the noise, the alt-Loran beverage was extremely efficient on the night to the 24th, compared to the KONG-HQ beverages. Too many good ones to mention, but here are some: KQCV-OK 800, WKDA-TN 900, KNTH-TX 1070, KBIZ-IA 1240, KFOR-NE 1240, KDLR-ND 1240,  KXPO-ND 1340, KWRT-MO 1370, KLFD-MN 1410, KWBF-TX 1420, KAUS-MN 1480,  KDRO-MO 1490.

Dinner! As we had calculated, the Barolo should be enough for two days, so on Saturday we added lots of vegetables and cooked it all for half an hour. There was still a little bit left, which was put into my freezer.

Barolo Leftovers

Still dry, partly cloudy, 5-6 Celsius. Windy at times. A few photos from Kjølnes lighthouse, 5 km from Berlevåg on Saturday:

Tourists! No, it's Ole and OJ

Kjølnes lighthouse

Pointing the coastline. Facing south.

Last Day, Part II will be posted Sunday evening.

KONG53 Day Eight - Already Saturday!

Days fly when you're having fun! Yesterday Friday was another windy, sunny and very mild day, though not particularly generous in terms of new radio stations. Some midlly interesting stations from yesterday were KBIZ-IA 1240, KFH-KS 1240, KCLE-TX 1460, KHIT-NV 1450. Signal levels were reasonably high from around 01:30  to a little after 06:00.

Back to yesterday's noise issue: We are no closer to a solution. The RFI clamps and toroids and new USB cables obviously did not change anything, so for practical reasons we changed back to the original setup. The real mystery, and perhaps a clue to how to identify the noise, is that once in a while it goes away, for a second or two up to 10-20 seconds.

One example of how clear the band is when the noise goes away is this audio recording of KMA-960. For strong stations like KMA it doesn't matter much. When we try to grab some intelligibility out of a very weak station, it becomes very difficult.

Today we will check the grounding more thoroughly. The ground rods and the interconnecting wires are covered in water so it's a bit difficult especially during these windy conditions.

We've had questions about the wind. Is this common? Well, it's not uncommon. The autumn is usually windy here as well as most other coastal locations. Southerly winds tend to accelerate from the higher altitude inland, and topography means that wind speeds can vary considerably over short distances. What is really not common is strong southerly winds and high temperatures over many days in October.

But when writing this at 05:00z on Saturday morning it's just a light breeze outside, and 7 degrees C.

Saturday morning, one hour before sunrise

Changing subject to eating, here is what we had for dinner Friday evening:

Starters: Mashed smoked salmon with sour creame on a loaf of Ole's masterfully crafted sourdough bread!

The main dish, lamb shanks in Barolo, was a long process, mastered by OJ.  First they were fried in a pan, then placed in a large Le Creuset enameled cast-iron casserole dish, together with two bottles of Barolo, lots of  peeled plum tomatoes, red chili and sage leaves. Here is an image before long-time cooking....

...and after several hours in the oven.

It doesn't get better than this. And yes, we had Barolo red wine with the Barolo. We will have the remaining Barolo today, with added vegetables.

For dessert we had assorted cheeses, mostly locally produced from the Pasvik valley. In addition there was a Dutch Gouda and a rather aggressive (to some) Espoisses from Bourgogne. Grappa? Yes.

While we were out around Berlevåg in the afternoon we took a couple of photos on the way. 

Kjølnes lighthouse under restauration

Yours truly - photo by OJ

KONG53 - Day Seven. Including a Question to RFI Experts!

So, time to get back to updates in reasonably regular intervals.

Windy conditions all of yesterday, overnight and into the morning. Here is how it looks at around 06:20z, 25 minutes after sunrise - I slept long. Still dry, and 6-8 Celsius. Wind levels 13-20 m/s.

Conditions across the pole still aren't the best. One station of interest off the alt-Loran site was KVSF-NM 1400.

Notes on RFI: At the alt-Loran site we have had some RFI across the Mediumwave band for several years. The noise varies somewhat in intensity. I made an MP3 that you can listen to here. It is mostly uniform in strength, but decreases a bit a few seconds at apparently random intervals. One such decrease is audible in the audio clip

So, the question was; Is it from an external source, or from within the Zarges case? After all, the noise level and characteristics is the same as it was before we moved a few hundred metres from the original Loran C site. Inside the Zarges case we have the 100Ah Li-Fe-PO4 battery that powers an Intel NUC and a 4G modem. The NUC powers the Perseus in addition to the data connection (two separate USB connections). There is also a Bodnar Mini-GPS device powered by the NUC, which transmits a weak signal on 1705 kHz for Jaguar calibration  

In order to find out, yesterday we put 75-type, 1.4" internal diameter toroids on the NUC-Perseus data USB cable and power USB cable. 15-20 turns if memory serves us correctly. In addition, we put five clamp-ons to the coax cable between the transformer and the Perseus.

We didn't come to a conclusion. The audio file above is actually from after we had installed the toroids and clamp-ons. The noise is identical to that before. So, the clamp-ons and toroids had no effect. That, or the noise comes from outside. 

It is worth noticing that the noise was present even when the antenna was disconnected (but transformer and ground was connected). A transformer change did not change the noise.

Expert opinions on this issue would be most welcome. Perhaps the characteristics of the audio is a clue? It may be worth mentioning that there is really no alternative to having everything inside the Zarges case.

After attempt to trouble-shoot the RFI, and some other issues we had to sort out, we had another visit to the Berlevåg swimming pool, including its excellent jacuzzi and sauna. Nobody else than us - we had booked it for an hour.

Back at the KONG-HQ it was time to prepare our second signature dish, reindeer tenderloins!

Reindeer tenderloins after fried 60 seconds on each side, and 5 minutes in the oven at 180 Celsius.

Served with paste of root vegetables (potatoes, carrots, seleriac) and a sauce based on game fond with fried onions and red chili, and cream. Lingonberry jam and lingonberry chutney besides. A Scarpa Piemonte red wine was served with the main course.

For dessert we had something we had never done before, Lemon Posset. It was actually quite good, especially with lingonberries or bilberries on top. A bit of grappa didn't make it worse.

Time to call it a day, but before I went to bed - rather early actually - I took this photo with the waxing moon doing a play of lights with the clouds.

Moon and clouds

KONG53 Day Six (a bit late) - Visit From Finland

A belated post due to lots of activities. So finally, yesterday started with clear skies and just a light breeze. It wasn't calm for long though, and the rest of the day and following night we had 12-15 m/s winds gusting above 20. I was out early in the day and took a few photos:

View from the house

KONG-HQ. A longwire starts from the pole in the front left

Leftover seagull after migration?

Pointing north

When I checked the signal levels via remote control at alt-Loran in the morning I found - nothing. Not one signal present. Since we record continuously, I could go "back in time" to see what had happened. It turned out that the day before, 10 minutes before we drove to Berlevåg (and actually passed the alt-Loran site), the signals had disappeared. We weren't checking alt-Loran at that part of the day because nothing interesting is heard then. And we had been there 3 hours earlier to replace the battery and SSD. 

Conditions weren't the best so we probably didn't lose much interesting DX. Anyway, the most likely cause was that the antenna wire had somehow detatched from the transformer, and that proved to be the case when we arrived there a few hours later. So, a quick fix.

DX-wise we did get the impact from the solar disturbances. Not much to report, really. So instead:

We had a visitor! Finnish DX-er Jim Solatie drove up from the northern Finnish DX sites Aihikiniemi and Lemmenjoki to pay us a visit. Not very coincidental, we had planned to have our signature dish King Crab with Carbonara that day! He arrived at 17 local.

So, lets talk about eating! For starters, we had goose liver paste on bread with fried onions and prunes. The main course was king crab baked in the oven at 250 degrees C on a bed of sea salt. Pancetta replacing the bacon improved the  carbonara a lot. For dessert: True vanilla, cream-based ice cream with forrest berries.

Jim had brought some excellent wines for the dinner. We started off with a champagne from Gosset, Zéro Dosage. Gosset has a wine-making history that spans from the 16th century. Jim did a good job in selecting the white wine as well, a 2023 Chablis Premiere Cru from Domaine Laroche.

This is what proper king crab with carbonara looks like. 

We spent the rest of the evening discussing Jim's recent project, DX-ing, TIS stations, geopolitics and whatnot. It was past midnight local before we called it a day.

And for those who don't know how we look like (and would like to know), here is (from left) Jim, Ole, OJ and me.

Today Thursday we noted that conditions again were so-so. There was some problems with alt-Loran which can wait until tomorrow's post. Quite a lot of wind, but dry and partly cloudy. Around 6-8 Celsius. So we had a long breakfast with Jim, who went on to Vardø later on. Just as breakfast was over another visitor, LA9VFA Olav Skår showed up. A 250-km return drive for coffee and a nice chat. That's dedication!

More about today tomorrow!

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.