KONG41 Day Eight - King Crab Mania!

 Signal levels varied but were quite high overnight, though not much of interest was noted. As for Asia/Pacific: Another boring day. Tonga-1017 had a short, early peak, and that was it. Replacement of battery and SSD on Mount Loran was done in very unpleasant conditions - strong gale force winds and constant rain. No fun at all!

All the more fun to prepare the second of the KONG DX-pedition signature meals, the King Crab! As usual, served with carbonara and a 2017 Le Buissy red wine. Although a little less meat than expected in each leg, the crab tasted wonderfully, baked on a bed of salt with spices.

Scissors for opening the legs...

Jim Solatie and Pia were supposed to enjoy the meal with us, unfortunately due to Covid-19 travel restrictions they were not able to enter Norway, so all they got were some photos. Next year!

It should be noted that we tried a Manzanilla 2017 sherry for some salty snacks as starters. Our ranking is on the photo below.

However, we found an excellent Mas Amiel for the dessert, chocolate pudding with custard.

Weather turned out as forecasted - gale force winds and heavy rain showers most of the day. 3-4 Celsius, so most of the snow on lower grounds is now gone. It will be windy and rainy today as well, so another wet challenge is awaiting Ole and OJ at Mount Loran. Below is today's morning view. By the way, tomorrow will be the last KONG41 update. Mount Loran will be dismantled tomorrow as well.

KONG41 Day Seven - And an Hour Worth Seven Days

Unsettled or disturbed conditions is very often boring. And sometimes not. As we hinted yesterday, very interesting things happened during a western daytimer opening that lasted less than an hour. Some of the signals were almost local-like. Best catches of the day were both on 810: KBHB Sturgis SD and some minutes later KTBI Ephrata WA. Lots of less usual and rarely heard stations were also heard, some to mention: KDFD-CO 760, KATL-MT 770, KUYO-WY 830, KJJR-MT 880, KOGA-NE 930, KVSH-NE 940, KFCD-TX 990, KFIO-WA 1050, KOKK-SD 1210, KOLY-SD 1300, KRCM-TX 1380. And we're still searching.

Just to give you an idea of which signal levels some stations had, this is KGFX-SD 1060.

The recordings from Mount Loran and the local 340-degrees beverage took all our time yesterday, so little focus on Asia/Pacific. Tonga-1017 had a great signal for several hours, but nothing else of interest really.

Yesterday was our annual dinner at Kongsfjord Guesthouse-day, after a quick sauna. Excellent baked halibut. LA9VFA Olav had a 2-hour drive on slippery roads to join us for dinner, much appreciated!

The weather on Wednesday was quite nice, not much precipitation, calm and just above freezing. Overnight the wind increased a bit and changed direction. A bit milder, but more rain. It may be quite windy today. Below is today's morning view.

KONG41 - Day Six

Wednesday: Geomagnetic warnings! Aurora! Return of the Chinese!

The spectra from Mount Loran tells how much signal levels varied throughout the night and until lunchtime. Often, disturbed condtions can give some very surprising loggings, however, as far as we know, not this time. We did note WMEJ-MS 1190 though, along with WBNS-OH 1460 at 01:00. Otherwise, only the usual stations.

Asia/Pacific DX was not good at all. The Chinese stations were on very early, and nothing of interest was noted. A couple of 1-kW NHK-2 stations were ID'ed at the 15:40 close-down. So most of the day was spent listening to IQ recordings from previous days and weeks.

While doing the daily Mount Loran battery and SSD replacement routine, we took a detour into Berlevåg where the fish shop sold fish cakes right out of the frying pan. We grabbed a few (for each) and headed back to Kongsfjord for a delicious lunch.

We had enough fish cakes when we started making dinner too, so for starters we re-fried them (sliced in halves) in bacon fat, and served with bacon slices and fried fresh ginger, grated carrots with fresh ginger and lime. A Calle's Riesling was the selected wine.

The main course was another leftover, as we had reindeer sirloins from the day before, served cold, with mashed potatoes and carrots, sauce with chanterelle and the rest of the lingonberry jam. The wine was a López de Heredia Rioja from 2007.

For dessert: Selected cheese with slightly roasted sourdough bread. Papillon Roquefort, Chévre, Gruyere and Parmesan were served with a Dow's 2006 Vintage Port. We have lots more cheese. And port...

Weather was a bit cooler than yesterday, hovering around zero and down to around -5 as the afternoon turned into night. Another starry, starry night. And what happened in the night will be told tomorrow. Interesting things...

As usual, a morning picture from today, as you can see the weather is very nice and the temperature is positive again. Friday and Saturday will be very windy and rainy. Today by the way, we're eating out!

KONG41 - Day Five

Signal levels towards North America varied quite a lot overnight, with a clear dip around 04:00. It didn't really recover until early afternoon (!) with very strong signals from Alaska and Hawaii around 13:00. The morning signal levels were low towards Asia/Pacific as well, but the dead band allowed signals from the Pacific islands and Hokkaido. In fact, the Chinese power houses, many of them incredibly dirty, didn't begin to dominate until 14:00. The image below shows how Newstalk ZB-1035 is the first signal visible, then at 13:00 it's quite dominant, before the highly un-synchronized CNR1 network starts to fade up - 3-4 hours "behind schedule".

Lots of New Zealand stations were noted, but the noise floor is still on the high side, so few below 1000 kHz. The NHK-2 close-down at 15:40 brought few stations of interest as Hokkaido stations with their generic non-QTH ID dominated too much.

Solar weather is a bit unsettled now, so we're hoping for more surprise openings towards North America and the Pacific.

It's not all live DX-ing though. Playback revealed WCRA Effingham IL 1090 from a while ago.

Time for one of the KONG signature dishes: Reindeer sirloins! For starters we had Bruschetta with Meinklang red wine. The main course was sirloins served with mashed carrots and potatoes, sauce with chanterelle and lingonberry jam. For dessert: Cloudberries in whipped cream. With the meat we tested a 1996 Chateau Musar. We may not go with that one again. With the cloudberries we had another round with Tokayer, and a Grappa at the end to clean up our taste buds.

Weather: The same, the same... occiasional rain showers, 2-4 Celsius, calm. The photo below is pretty much like yesterday's except this morning we had a snow shower coming in.

KONG41 - Day Four

Nothing spectacular to report the last day. Signal levels were generally high on the trans-polar paths, but more interference than usual (or wanted) due to higher signals from Europe/Middle East as well. 

Pacific came early yesterday as well, with New Zealand mixing with UK at 09:00. The hope for a nice NHK-1 opening at 10:00 was lost due to increased noise levels.  The 1-kW Asahikawa relays in Enbetsu and Wakkanai (792 and 927 kHz) were nice and strong, also Aomori 963 and a few others. The noise levels were on the high side for the rest of the day.

Checking early night with Jaguar, one can see how WLQV Detroit 1500 changes from day power/pattern to night power/pattern. I would suspect they use two transmitters. The day transmisson is about 3 Hz high while the night transmission is about 8 Hz low. The drifting at the start of the night transmission might indicate a warm-up drift. WLQV is 50 kW days, 10 kW nights.

The main use of this feature is to spot stations with high daytime powers before they power down or power off.

Dinner was a bit the same as yesterday. The starter was different though, duck liver paste. The main course was leftovers from the lamb, cooked in Barolo with chopped vegetables thrown in. Then for dessert, another round of chocolate mousse with cloudberry jam. The duck liver paste was served with a 5 puttonyos Tokay Aszú from 2013. A Lopez de Heredia Rioja from 2008 went very well with the modified Barolo dish. Another round of Banyuls for the dessert.

We do test a few beers during our stay. Below is a selection...

Yesterday's weather: It warmed up a bit so the snow and sleet turned into rain. 3-4 degrees Celsius, some dry periods. This morning's view from the living room:

KONG41 - Day Three

Monday! How time flies. Sunday started off nicely with a few daytimers closing down, such as KUYO-WY 830, KQLX-ND 890, KKOJ-MN 1190 and KDOM-MN 1580. Signal levels were good all Sunday, but night reception was a bit disturbed from snow-induced noise. After checking the Mount Loran recordings, the WNJC 1360 test was heard at 05:41.

Pacific stations arrived early, the carrier from Tonga-1017 was visible from 06:30 and very well readable at 09:00. New Zealand arrived early as well, but so did the rest of the Asian continent so they weren't easy to pick.

Tonga, while still alone on the frequency

As the day passed, the snow shower activity eased off a bit, and spending time outdoor was quite pleasant. 

KONG HQ to the right, neighbours including the guesthouse to the left. Facing west.

As evening drew nigh, we did our usual unusual-beer routine, before settling at the dinner table. Starters was salmon tartare, consisting of smoked and fresh, sashimi-quality salmon, together with red onion and chive. A Knewitz Riesling Eisenerz accompanied this course very well.

The main course was a lamb thigh, baked at very low temperature for a very long time - 7 hours in fact. An excellent meal with mashed root vegetables and a spicy sauce. We chose Italian for the red wine, a Langhe Nebbiolo 2018.

Dessert was M&M... Magnificent and Massive! Chocolate Mousse with a cloudberry jam on top. Wow. A 2008 Banyuls didn't make it worse! All this bought us into instant and deep hibernation mode, from which we only just recovered!

Weather report: Snow and sleet showers which eased off during the day (and a starry starry night followed). Temperatures still just on the "red" side during the day, a few degrees below at night. Almost dead calm. We appreciate that.

KONG41 - Day Two

 A somewhat uneventful night sort of peaked at 06:00 with loggings of rare WBHR Sauk Rapids MN 660, and new (to me) WVAL 800 from the same city. WREY-MN 630 also noted. Good signals from Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas - more suprising was that at the same time several Colombians were audible, and even Radio Monumental, Chacuí Paraguay 1080. And then KKMO-WA on 1360. Propagation which we, with directive beverage antennas, call unfocused.

WVAL-800 is a good example of "seeing the station" with Jaguar software. With CKLW being the huge channel dominant, it is useful to use the Jaguar Spectra tool to see which other stations are visible, but maybe buried in the dominant station's signal. As luck would have it, WVAL came from virtually nothing to a good signal a few minutes around the full hour, and then faded away.

The Spectra tool view also gives a good impression of how many stations are actually on the frequency, but not audible. Since stations tend to have small, and often stable offsets from the nominal frequency, one can make qualified guesses about station identity.

Ole arrived around noon after an arduous journey on snowy and icy roads. DX-peditioning is not for the faint of heart! Later on we did another trip to Mount Loran for battery and SSD replacements, and finishing antenna repairs. Frequent snow showers and slushy roads.

Dinner time! Fried salmon with carbonara. The white wine came all the way from New Zealand, a 2018 Yealand Sauvignon Blanc. For dessert we enjoyed a blueberry pie with custard, and of course Amaretto!

Weather is much the same, snow showers with clear skies in between and temperatures just below freezing.

KONG41 - Day One

 OK, so here we go again! We were doing some math yesterday, and found out that over the past 24 years we've actually spent more than a year together on this location! Starting off with extremely basic equipment, and little comfort, the journey has been spectacular indeed.

Anyway, I picked up OJ Sagdahl at Berlevåg airport on Friday afternoon, and we headed directly towards our Mount Loran remote, battery-powered Perseus/Jaguar/1000-metre beverage setup. After replacing the battery and the SSD, we discovered that "something", most likely a reindeer, had messed around with the antenna. The antenna lead to the transformer had been torn off, so the last four nights of recording were total silence. After half an hour, the damage was repaired, and there was no sign of the reindeer so it probably got away unharmed.

Mount Loran remote setup, Kjølnes lighthouse in the background. Facing East.

Not too much to report station-wise - KGMI Bellingham WA 790 isn't too common though. Tonga-1017 and Marshall Islands-1098 were heard with moderate levels.

Early in the evening Ole Forr reported that he's on his way from Andøya, a 12-hour drive even in summer conditions. Now: Icy roads.

We were only two for dinner this first day: The usual self-composed Bjarne-style fish gratin. We were supposed to have chocolate pudding with custard for dessert, but there simply wasn't room for any more.

Ole told us this morning he decided to rest a bit in Karasjok before doing the last 280-km leg. We will head out towards Mount Loran later today to pick up the latest catches and do final antenna repairs. And with that, below is the usual morning picture from Kongsfjord. Temperatures just above freezing in the day, at or below at night.

QSLs: Three Surprising Catches from Australia on 936, 1485, 1602 kHz

Very early and very late in the DX season are the best periods for hunting Aussies on MW. In short: After spring equinox and before autumn equinox. The 80 degrees beverage is best suited, because on the summer side of equinox the 50 degrees beverage points too much to the north, where daylight lasts longer.

I had an excellent opening on September 3 which rewarded me with two 200-watt ABC outlets, and my first in-band Tasmanian station. 

The first one I logged was 5LN ABC 1485kHz Port Lincoln, SA. I have been monitoring 1485 for some time in hunt for ABC, and heard the Majestic Fanfare and some audio with quite good quality. This made me check 1602 kHz, since ABC stations have been heard on 1602 before on my location. And like on cue, there it was, 5LC ABC Leigh Creek, SA. Much weaker, but legible.

I have been hunting Tasmania on 936 intensively with no luck for at least a year. With the two South Australia stations audible, I knew there should be a chance of hearing 7ZR ABC Hobart. And indeed I did. At the half hour UTC (which btw is full  hour in South Australia but half hour in Tasmania), I heard a promotion for a show on ABC-TV, then half an hour later the Majestic Fanfare was audible with a fair signal. 

All three receptions were confirmed this morning.

The distance from Kongsfjord to Eyre Peninsula and Lincon is around 14,200 km. Not bad for 200-watt signals in a congested band. Hobart is 15,480 km away and of course my most distant Aussie reception.

KONG40 Report: Antennas and Preparing for the Season

 A little belated, here's an update of the KONG40 DX-pedition which took place from Sept 4 to 6. Actually it's not much of a DX-pedition as such, more of a preparation expedition. Because things need to be in place for the equipment to survive the winter with minimal human presence!

Fellow DX-ers Ole Forr and OJ Sagdahl had a loong drive from southern Norway, especially since driving through Sweden and Finland was out of the question because of Covid-19. This added 4-5 hours to the planned 20-hour drive. They "landed" in the early afternoon. Four main objectives:

1. Set up the temporary, battery-powered Mount Loran 1000-metre beverage listening post.

2. Set up the remaining of four beverage antennas, a dual-beverage antenna aimed at North America's west coast.

3. Set up their own gear in Kongsfjord and make all systems work.

4. Test a few beers.

The Mount Loran deployment was most urgent since we needed to be finished before daylight faded. It's quite a bit of work involved - a heavy reel with the antenna wire, a box with a PC, a Perseus, I/O units and a 100 Ah battery. At the site, we need to negotiate an 800-metre walk at a rather steep angle, so a wheelbarrow is a necessity. Having done this a few times, we're well drilled with the procedures and spent only two hours from leaving the house until we were back (it's a 20-minute drive to and from).

Being quite satisfied with the day's work, we enjoyed a few fabulous beers, such as the Lervig Supersonic and the Tank 7. For dinner we had my own secret recipe fish soup, comprising fresh cod fillets, chopped carrots, seleriac, red chili, leak and almond potatoes. Chocolate pudding and custard for dessert. Weather: Awesome. A bit windy, but dry and 17-18 celsius. Like a warm day in July.

Saturday: Lots of equipment needs to be placed, and preferably in a tidy manner. Contrary to previous seasons, and with the help of a slightly refurbished 1950's home made rack, things do look quite good. Below are OJ's and Ole's equipment.

Third on our list was setting up the dual beverage. Sorry that there were no photos from the work, but the weather on Saturday was as nice as on Friday, if not better. More beers were tested, and for dinner we had fried salmon with carbonara. A red wine I don't remember anymore fitted the meal reasonably well. For dessert we had the rest of the chocolate pudding. 

Sunday was more relaxing, although last night's recordings from Mount Loran had to be collected together with a battery replacement. Later on we inspected the beverages and diverted to the tip of the peninsula where the navigation light stands. Even warmer this day, 20 Celsius, still windy but a welcome chill it was.

This last day we tested some beers (surprise....) and for dinner we had a home-made (and pre-made) fish gratin. The ultra-secret recipe was haddock fillets, fried bacon and onion, leak, carrots and macaroni. A round with Calle's Riesling with this one, and for dessert another home-made (and first-made) thing that proved delicious, blueberry pie with fresh blueberries picked along the antenna paths! Unfortunately, we ran out of custard.

On Monday morning Ole and OJ headed for Andøya and more antenna work. I drove to Vadsø to check out my new car. 

Next time we meet will be in mid-October for the 9-day KONG41 DX-pedition.