Tuesday, October 20, 2009

LEM279 up and running (10.10 - 15.10.2009)

Greetings to you all, fellow DXers!

We (JSN & MKA) arrived to Lemmenjoki on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. UTC. It took about an half and hour when our DX-gear (3 x Perseus, 1 x SDR-IQ) was up and running.

We have enjoyed the great weather here: clear skies, snow some 10 centimetres, temperature in the mornings between -8 to -14 Celcius.


Fog is rising up from Lake Kuivajärvi at sunrise

Here's a short summary what has happened on the radiowaves:

Sunday 11.10: Mediocre NA, good MEX-opening in the morning. In the afternoon the best HI/AK-opening I and Martti have ever experienced before - though, not a "brilliant" one. 1330 & 1430 AK were heard. But have not been checked from the recordings.

Monday 12.10: Nice Orinoco opening at local sunrise. Mediocre NA.

Tuesday 13.10: Improved NA-conditions: At 04:00 UTC the conditions favoured the Rocky Mountain area. At 07:00 a big swing to the East Coast. In the afternoon an early opening to HI/AK. Unfortunately not as strong as on Sunday.

Wednesday 14.10: NA with nice signals from 00:00 UTC. After 05:00 UTC also Andean stations. Later on, stations from TX and the Rocky Mountains area. We spent the whole afternoon in Sevettijärvi area testing a promising, possibly new, QTH. Our main concern was a 20 KV powerline. We were equipped with a laptop, an SDR-IQ and a 900 meters longwire erected almost parallel to the powerline for our testing purposes. Luckily, we didn't detect any electrical "bruises".

Extreme DXing in the "middle of nowhere".

During our visit to Sevettijärvi there were quite nice conditions to the Far-East. In the evening nice opening to the Philippines at 20:00 UTC. East Coast NA started at 21:00 with some daytimers.

Thursday 15.10: NA with nice signals till 07:15 UTC. Then a small disturbance from the sun wiped out all TA-signals. We left Lemmenjoki at 11:00 UTC and drove to Oulu where we stayed the night at JPR's QTH - many thanks JPR for your hospitality! On Friday morning at 04:30 UTC we continued to Vaasa. Martti and I are both very satisfied with the results. There's a lots of work ahead to go thru all the files.

Something from our log books ("On the fly"): WLCM-1390, KALL-700, KUTR-820, KZOO-1210, KLHT-1040, WSBB-1230, WFOY-1240, WMMB-1240, WTMA-1250, Japanese utility (maritime) stations on 1649.5 & 1663.5, Rete Italia, Darwin(?)-1611, DZNL-783 (split), WCHP-760, WFIF-1500, KDAL-610, KLSQ-870, WKYW-1490, WTNY-790

Besides DXing, we've enjoyed culinary cooking and good wines as usual.

Our pedition log will be pulished at: http://www.netikka.net/jsn/LEM279_loki.xls

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