KONG39 Report Day One (Oct 18)

Participants:
OJ Sagdahl, Ole Forr, Bjarne Mjelde (host)

KONG39 started a bit earlier than expected. Ole had made the 1000-km drive from Andøya in record  speed, and in winter conditions, and arrived at 06:00, as Bjarne was driving to Kirkenes to pick up OJ at the airport. At 11:20, when we were stuck in a road maintenance queue, Ole texted a New Zealand alert! We were quick to pick up our laptops and connect to our KONG SDRs. Amazing signal levels! Alas, later analysis revealed that most stations were heard before - still it was by a large margin the best NZ opening so far this season. It's always nice when 2-kW 1XX in Whakatane, NZ dominates over 100-kW JOLF!

Remote NZ DX in the car

We arrived in Kongsfjord around 13:00 and went directly to our Mount Loran 1000-metre site to replace the battery and other equipment. Asia conditions in the afternoon and evening was rather uninspiring, and we had the traditional first-day meal, home-made fish gratin with chocolate pudding & custard for dessert, in the evening.

Temperatures around 0 Celsius, a "refreshing" breeze and mostly dry between the occasional snow shower. Icy roads much of the drive. In the morning of the 19 it's sunny, but snow showers looming outside the coast to the north. Superb signals from Hawaii right now. More to come!