KONG-HQ End of MW Season (Seriously!)

Two weeks have passed since my last visit to the KONG HQ. April so far has been amazing. Sunny. Calm. Dry. Warm (relatively speaking). A stark contrast to April last year.  And it came with surprising DX! Most years, little of interest is heard in April, due to the increased amount of daylight on the polar signal paths. Imagine our surprise when 500-watt (assuming they were on day power with all the thunder and tornado warnings) KCII Washington IA was literally blasting away on 1380 on the 18th! A new log for me.

To illustrate the signal path relative to the greyline (or, more precise, the sunset line) I made a video of WRTO's full-hour ID at 02:01 UTC. Sunrise came at 01:35 here and trans-polar signals lasted for another four hours.

Part of Saturday was spent outdoor in the sun, as I needed to collect the remains of the broken western part of the staggered 340-beverage. The past few weeks only the 310 beverage has been active. Below a few photos from the outdoor activity.

KONG-HQ - few shades of green so far

Antenna supports for the 340-degrees beverage

Last snow (maybe?)

At midnight I took a few photos to illustrate how it looks 4 weeks before the midnight sun arrives.

Midnight view (south)

Midnight view (north)

Sunday was another day with clear skies. But MW propagation had collapsed so the last remaining beverage was dismantled, and with that, the end of the 2025-2026 MW season. Seriously!

So, preparations for the upcoming FM season have begun. Two FM antennas will be used, one beamed to the Northwest (Iceland. Greenland. Canada???). The other pointing eastwards (Siberia. Kasakhstan? Mongolia?? China???). We plan to use several  SDRPlay SDRs, which should be up and running by late May.

Below a couple of images from Sunday.

Heading: 310!

KONG-HQ

KONG-HQ End of MW Season (Mostly)

 Although the trans-polar path is still open for a few hours each night, the longer days we have now (15 hours today) make DX-ing increasingly less rewarding. And with the current major solar disturbances in effect, there was really no purpose in keeping the beverage antennas up. As many will know this is reindeer pasture, and I noted hundreds of migrating reindeer on my drive across the mountain plateau towards Kongsfjord on Saturday morning. Beverage antennas and reindeer with antlers don't go along well, so it was time to reel in the wires. Except one, which is less exposed to damage.

Magnificent Easter weather on Saturday. A bit windy but clear skies made antenna work quick and easy and I got it all done by afternoon. And that was a good thing because Sunday arrived with quite dense snowfall which made outdoor activities less attractive.

The drive back home to Vadsø took a bit longer than the usual 2h 15min because of slushy roads and a flat light whiteout across the mountain plateau. The available "navaids" in circumstances like this are red-coloured snow poles and contrast-enhancing sunglasses. The snow poles are visible on the blog's background image.

I've spent much more time on DX-ing this season compared to previous years. I set a goal early in the season to publish monthly logs on my blog. This has obviously been a booster for motivation, and the number of new stations logged is surprisingly high:

USA (30), Japan (7), Australia (6), Mexico (3), Ecuador (2), New Zealand (1) and Indonesia (1). Most of the US stations have been logged before at the KONG-HQ and Smøla-HQ by my much more active companions Ole and OJ. So, it's a bit of playing catch-up on my part.

A few photos from last weekend:

After arrival

At work. Starting point of the 310 beverage to the right on the snow (still up)

At work. Reeling in the 340 beverage

No fun Sunday

KONG-HQ March Logs, Network Changes, And a Theft...

March turned out to be quite an interesting month, with eight personal first logs on my part. March also marked the most significant change for Japan's NHK network for many decades, as two MW networks merged into one. And I fell victim to a theft - a truly absurd one.

This month's log is here.

March 3rd was a very good day, with interesting DX from North America (like KTTR-MO and KDRO-MO both on 1490  within 30 minutes), New Zealand, Philippines, and a new log from Japan! The 1-kW Tsuruoka relay of NHK-2 Yamagata was heard on 1035 kHz with sign-off on this very noisy channel. Happy with that one!

Nothing new from New Zealand, but in terms of stations logged, maybe the best NZL opening this season.

On March 5th I monitored the last minutes of CJVB Vancouver BC 1470. They turned their transmitter off  at 07:45. It remains to be seen if someone else will take their place, like what happened in Winnipeg on 1290. CJVB will continue on FM.

March 12th and 13th also provided good reception, especially from North America. 1060 brought me KNLV-NE and XERDO-TAM as new logs within four minutes! Other stations worth mentioning were KRPU-CA 1210, KGLB-MN 1310 and another exceptional log of WZBU-1520, drowning the 50-kW giants with their mere 550 watts (assuming daytime power)!

A few days later, WEUR-IL surfaced briefly on 1490 (thanks OF!) and I got my second personal first from Japan this month with 5-kW NHK-1 Toyama on 648. Two days after that, KRDU-CA was noted briefly on 1130, and I noted a new Aussie for me with ABC New England NW-NSW on 648, together with several other stations from Australia.

On March 22, KPUR-TX 1440 was noted on the air again with assumed day power - it's been silent for a while. Likely on air to maintain their license.

Nothing much happened until the two last days of March, when I noted unusual stations like KLWN-KS 1320, KENN-NM 1390 and KQAM-KS 1480.

Station of the month: CJVB's final English-language goodbye-announcement, before leaving dead air followed by transmitter close-down.

Another major change I followed was the merger of Japan's NHK-1 and NHK-2 networks into the new NHK AM network. From 15:00 to 15:05 on Sunday March 29th there was a lengthy announcement with information about the merger, and how to access the NHK on MW and other platforms. Then, just before 15:05 came the last ever local ID from the NHK-2 network, as recorded here from 1-kW JOJC Yamagata, 1521 kHz.

Later that day (actually in the morning the day after in Japan), I noted the new network's name when I monitored the local ID from JOJK Kanazawa on 1224. No longer was it "dai-ichi hoso", but "AM hoso"! Here is the first ever local ID on the NHK AM network.

So, who wants to steal a beverage transformer?

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the signal level from the 50-degrees beverage had dropped significantly. Usually when that happens, there is a reindeer involved. And since this is reindeer migration season, I suspected it was.

Last weekend I drove to the KONG-HQ for some tests. While there, I inspected the beverage. It looked nice and sharp! So, why the signal loss? I walked to the starting point, where the coax feedline, antenna wire and ground meet in a DX-Engineering transfomer, inside a battery box. So I opened the battery box, and.... no transformer! Now, this was obviously man-made since no reindeer I know is capable of opening a belted batteri box, unscrew the antenna and ground leads, unscrew the F plug from the transformer, remove it, and replace the lid and belt on the box! By all means, it's not a major issue in any sense compared to what's going on around us these days. It just felt so.... absurd. Like...why? What was going on in that person's mind? Did he feel any personal achievement? Did he have a beverage antenna waiting for a transformer?

We will likely never know. Anyway, I had a spare transformer at hand, so the beverage is up and running again.

Below are some photos from the area (including the empty battery box) from last weekend. Very little snow left after a very mild March. But April could be totally different.

Transformer gone missing

On the path to the 340 beverage (facing south). Crusty and battered snow from recent thaws and wind storms.

Snow drift - hard as concrete

In a few days near the end of Easter I will probably go back and lower the beverages to the ground, or reel them in, as this season is about to end. And the reindeer will mess around with our wires anyway. The dark nights will eventually give way to the Midnight Sun six weeks from now.

And then we will prepare for the FM season!