Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Walking in a winter wonderland!


It is here: winter
Indeed it is now here at the QTH - everything is covered by the increasing snow - after this picture we have got about 20 cm more and it is still snowing (since about 5 days...). the antenna (LWOG) is now deep in snow - and the lw wirh some snow also making it heavier and heavier. Not to mention some electric problems making the SDR-recordings to stop. Well, the weatherman says however that we will enjoy cold (and bright) weather later on.

And the Space Weather
has been a bit active as well during the last few days with an active sunspot. However the latest impact was more Proton oriented with only moderate Aurora down here in Southern Finland.

The first impact on Jan 22 at 0615utc (as informed by SpaceWeather.com) was noted also: all the TransPolar/Trans Atlantic frequencies were "shaked" + - 3 Hz just during the impact of the CME and the Solar Wind Sock (picture below, an IQ-analysis of 1470 kHz around 06-07utc). Interesting - I have noted often some smearing etc during bad propagation and sunrise - now it seems the ionosphere did collapse a bit just during the impact making real Doppler effects.

When it snows, ain't it thrilling,
Though your nose gets a chilling
We'll frolic and play, the Eskimo way,
Walking in a winter wonderland.
73,TK

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

King´s Village DX-Station December 2011: BSS Sanin Hoso (JOHF 900) Japan


Japanese stations are rather common in (at least Eastern & Northern) Scandinavia. Although sometimes in Southern Finland the European QRM is very heavy. Aslo, often during the condtions towards Asia China tends to dominate channels.
So it was a surprise to log BSS also on 900 kHz in December with "Sanin Hoso" announcement. This seems to be a 5 kW JOHF. BSS has been audible several times also this winter on 1431 (when the Euro-QRM is not heavy), but this was the first time to get it here. Although the 1431 has other JOs, BSS seems to be the easiest and a lot easier than 900 (where China usually dominates if Europeans are poor). This logging was the my MW JO-station n:o 79 logged in King´s Village QTH (not all with local IDs however).

73 TK

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Happy New Year 2012


King´s Village DX wish you a Happy New Year 2012! The end of the year was interesting in Southern Finland: temperatures as high as + 10 degrees C and no snow! And one of the strongest winter gale with heavy wind. Fortunately no damages at the QTH - the electricity was down as many as eight times during the worst day Dec 26. So all the IQ-recordings of unattended DXing stopped of course.
Let´s see how conditions will develop in the beginning of this year. There is an interesting sunspot turning towards Earth - we will see if we get a real fireworks after a rather long period on inactivity.

73 TK