A new antenna tested

Finally got my new miniwhip antenna. The size is about 4x8 cm(whip) + power feed unit of 5x5cm. The Miniwhip "pa0rdt" arrived and was briefly tested both at my home qth (urban) and at King s Village place (rural). I have not yet any figures of the performance but the conlusions are:
- you have to put it as high as porrible (as you can see, being on the head of the snow man of 1 meter is too low!)
- better to have it at least 10-20 meters from the local-QRN (house) - it performed rather ok at rural qth with low man made noise as far as background noise is concerned
- the signal it delivers is less than other antennas I comprared (ALA100, 150 m longwire, KAZ 10x40 and BOG/BUS 300m)
- signal to noise level is ok with rather low noise level although it is an active antenna
- the signal level drops radically when you transfer the antenna inside of the house; it is not for inside use
73 TK

Kings Village antennas after snow storm

Yes; The KAZ (10x40) survived the latest snow storm in Southern Finland. The BOG (beverage on the ground) is now BUS (beverage under snow, see the black wire going into the snow in the pic) after the accumulated snow of about 20 cm. It seems the performance of the BOG/BOS (300 m, NE) is still ok for Far East on MF (MW), but snow and ice (the wire freezed on the surface of the earth) does make something to the performance on the tropical bands (2-5 MHz). It still works and it is QUIET, but also the strength of the sw signals is (propably) less than before, what is noted when trying to hear Aboriginal music from ARDS 5050.

Conditions has been good to East all the October with a lot of Chinese and Japanese - good levels at times - and some Philipinos (like 1269, 1314, 1476.1) and a few new Thai for me (1278, 1224). Although the geomagnetic indices were very good during the last few days, the conditions towards West has been rather poor with some early openings to Canada (like CBG 1440.01 19.30) - but not so good in the mornings. Just now, as predicted the minor storm by the CH has arrived. Let´s see if something happens with the new sunspot ! 73 TK

CHML Hamilton ON 900 - verification

I got an e-mail verification today to my mailbox from CHML Hamilton. It was really nice to get a QSL straigt to Lemmenjoki during LEM234 pedition!
I picked up CHML during PAX63 with fine signal October 10, 2006.

LEM234 - 9th of November

We woke up not until 2150UTC Wednesday night in spite of the excellent solar weather indicies. At the time stations from Maritime Privices were audible just like the previous evening. We noticed also stations from Wisconsin and Iowa but the stations were again the most common ones. 0530UTC-0815UTC the lower band offered some nice stations from North- and South Dakota and Mexico as well.

Quite good conditions all day long on the upper band until 1430 UTC. Fine MT- and ID opening in the end of this Thursday. Obviously we captured a daytimer station in the late afternoon but however, it needs some further investigations. It will surely take many, many hours to go thru all the recordings we have made…

At the moment the solar wind started to rise and K-index 4 is expected according to the NOAA website. We are waiting for interesting evening opening.

Weather today - cloudy with snow showers and -10 degrees. Because of the cloudy weather we are not going to face possible Northern Lights tonight.

LEM234 - 8th of November

CKEC New Glasgow, NS-1320 made the record during LEM234 being audible Tuesday evening as early as 1950 UTC - the record so far was 2130UTC. Common stations from NF, NS and ME were audible late in the evening and some usual east coast stations faded in soon after 22UTC.

Because of the USA Senate Elections results on almost every single US -station and as we both were quite tired we slept three hours in the night. Since some NA was audible at the same time we recorded the files continously. In the morning between 0530-0730UTC we concentrated in the lower MW -band as we noticed quite strong opening between 530-1000 kHz. This was the first time that the lower band offered something more serious to listen to. Almost every frequency gave something - mainly stations from the east coast, QC and ON and a couple of stations from Cuba and Mexico. AK and HI in the afternoon and otherwise more or less diminants all day in the upper band.

We expect still one or two good and interesting nights and days to NA just before the coming CH disturbance will kill the conditions on Friday night. Hopefully we could enjoy conditions concetrating to the certain areas of the US and Canada. So far we have had stations almost from coast to coast the same time.

Weather today - sunny and -25 degrees. Nice moonlight and bright stars in the sky at nightime and no Northern Lights…yet!

LEM234 - 7th of November

Late in the evening at 22:15 UTC we had a short opening to Maine and Newfounland but later in the night only dominant NAs ja SAs could be heard. We got some sleep and waked up just before 0200 UTC when we noticed strong signals from the US east coast. Beginning at 0330 UTC stations from coast to coast and CA were audible but it was very difficult to pick up something new. No peak at the local sunrise like we had yesterday. Otherwise we had NAs all day long until late afternoon but only on the upper band. Updated LEM234 log

No snowing today, temperature -10 ° C.

P.S. Naturally we have old trusted Trio with us in Lemmenjoki. However, we have had too busy to install it so far…

LEM234 - November 6th

NA from 21:30UTC to 08:15. Weak/moderate signals most of the time and so cxs offered nothing very special in the night. However in the morning a couple of nice east coast stations like WROD Daytona Beach, FL-1340, WLLV Louisville, KY-1240 and WDJA Delray Beach, FL-1420 were captured with clear signals. Also KPRK Livingston, MT-1340 and KQDJ Jamestown, ND-1400 were heard.

Some sleeping breaks again in the morning and in the afternoon we checked four antennas of the LEM -antenna array.

Unfortunately sunspots number 921 and 922 are active at the moment and this makes the solar weather quite unstable.

We got more snow today and the the temperature is around -12 degrees Celsius.

LEM234 - November 5th

NA began last night around 22:00 UTC and stations were heard from coast to coast but only most common stations were audible. That's why we slept most of the night. Stations faded out about 07:00 UTC and came back several times during the day (10:00-14:00 UTC). Among other stations we picked up KXMG-1150, KPUG-1170, KIXI-880 and KPOJ-620. Cx seems to improve quite slowly and reason for that is probably sunspots 921 and 922.

Weather otherwise has been cloudy and we had some snow showers today. Temperature -10 degrees Celsius.

LEM234 - 4th November

LEM234 (JVA, TuA) is now on starting Nov. 4 at 10.00 UTC. The common WC- and AK stations were audible between 11.00-15.00 UTC. For instance KLKI Anacortes WA-1340, KCCS Salem OR-1220, KEYG Grand Coulee WA-1490.

We will publish all identified stations in LEM234 log with the exact dates and times and useful information as well. We'll try to update stations at least once a day.

LEM234 will start 4th of Nov

LEM234 will start tomorrow. If Internet connection works JVA and TUA will report about pedition in this blog. We try also publish station lists from Lemmenjoki with exact dates and times to LEM234 log