Friday, December 21, 2012

Happy Winter Solstice -If Tomorrow Never Comes?

The bad predictions seems to be partly true when visiting the King´s Village QTH last night:

First of all the MW-band was almost totally down with all signals down (even the local St Peterburg powerhorses) by about -60....-80 dB! Maybe the geomagnetic field is going to reverse and the ionosphere will be gone forever ? Furthermore there was an accumulation of white stuff from the Heaven - now covering everything (40 cm deep). OK - the last item was snow and actually because of the snow my LWOG-BOG was cut right from the beginning of the wire - only about 1 meter left. This was fixed soon after some walk in deep snow...

But the Sun is gone for several days now (photos could be taken using the flash anyway) - How do we know it will rise tomorrow at all ?

As was written in some of the apocalyptic literature the "Land will be Frozen". It seems to be true anyway with the current temperatures down to about -20 centigrades...

Update will come tomorrow, if ...

I wish all readers a Happy Winter Solstice (21 Dec. 11.12 UTC)!

73, TK


UPDATE 22 Dec:
Soon after Noon I could see the light! The clouds went almost away and the sun was "almost" there, not very high as the day was the shortest of the year - but it is there anyway.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

King's Village DX-Station November: DZMM Manila 630

DZMM 630

In Southern Finland this year has been rather poor to Asia after some better conditions in September & October. However one day in the beginning of November was a bit better to the Philippines and I was a able to "listen live" a new catch for me: 630 DZMM Manila with its typical news and information programs. At the same time a couple of others were noted as well like 1160.9, 1314, 1350 and 1530. It seems by the way that the Manila station on 1242 is now on a higher offset: 1242.12.
DZMM 630 was audible only a while as the European QRM became too heavy on this channel. Anyway it was nice to get a new one from the Philippines after a while. It seems we have about a dozen to twenty stations "easily" audible during good propagation conditions even in the Southern part of Finland.

A hidden antenna - ready to go

Finally I was able to erect my Far East wire just prior to some new snow (accumulating now to about 10 cm). So it is nice to check if there are going to be any better conditions later on. The first snow with very heavy wind was noted at the QTH on November 30 (with no more than 4-5 electricity power downs of 1-4 hours each). The wire (about 300 metres @ 50 degrees) is now safely (?) under the snow, hopefully the small animals will not find it soon either. It seems this wire has better S/N compared to my delta-Flag/KAZ (with FLG100 amp.). That was noted when checked it by listening to a few Papua-NG stations on 90 mb: 3260, 3315, 3365 & 3385 were all audible at their s/on around 20.00 utc (Dec 3rd).

73,TK