Sunday, October 27, 2013

Kongsfjord Revisited - One Week Later

If anyone was waiting for a final KONG23 post, I apologise. A severe weather forecast was in effect for departure day (Saturday Oct 19), but luckily the storm held its breath until I had sent TJ, OJ and Arnstein to the airport. The mountain crossing on my return to Vadsø was a little challenging, but I was safe at home when the storm hit. It lasted until Sunday evening. Since then weather's been nice, and my trip to Kongsfjord on Friday afternoon was uneventful, save a few snow drifts.

Conditions have been under the influence of an active sun, but reasonably good most of the time. Friday saw two X-level flares, and I expected a dead band on the night. Not so. Contrary to the common mid-west and western stations usually dominating here, I had a rush of east coast, Caribbean and Colombian stations, many not heard here before. Some of the more interesting ones were WAOC St. Augustine FL 1420, WCSL Cherryville NC 1590, WQSC Charleston SC 1340 and WGHB Farmville NC 1250, the first three new for me. WMDD Fajardo PR was booming in on 1480, and WMKI Boston MA, WSKO Syracuse NY and CKHJ Frederickton NB were fighting for dominance on 1260 in the absence of usual dominant CFRN Edmonton AB.
310 beverage overnight Jaguar waterfall, October 26

Contrary to previous days when conditions lated until 13:00 UTC or longer, signal levels were rather weak at 07:00 and more or less completely gone by 08:00. I had hoped for an east coast sunrise opening, but it was not to come.

Saturday afternoon brought nothing of interest from Asia and the Pacific, and Sunday was uneventful. Heavy interference from Europe, and only the usual La Plata stations audible. Conditions turned a bit north later in the morning with a few eastern NA stations at very low signal levels, and also HJJW Bogotá 1460. However, we DX by the slogan "Expect the Unexpected", and  WWNA Radio Una 1340 in Aguada PR fits perfectly into that category. Thanks Arnstein for checking my recording.

310 beverage overnight Jaguar waterfall, October 27

In contrast to Saturday, when the 340 beverage heard almost the same as the 310 beverage, today was totally different and the 340 was basically empty.

Weather has been quite ok for October, from +1 to -2 Celsius, mostly cloudy and occasional flurries, mostly calm. Quite a contrast to the previous weekend.

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