Kongsfjord - 70°43'N 29°21'E
KONG33 - October 28 to November 6, 2016
Participants:
Bjarne Mjelde, OJ Sagdahl, Ole Forr, Tore Johnny Bråtveit
Receiver summary:
Bjarne: CloudIQ, 2 x Perseus SDR, KiwiSDR
OJS: 2 x Perseus SDR
Ole: 2 x Perseus SDR
Tore Johnny: Excalibur G31DDC, 2 x Excalibur Pro G33DDC
Weblog
1-NOV-2016 @
06:00 UTC
The KONG-crew is back! Actually we have been here a
while. Bjarne and Ole arrived last Thursday, 27 October, while TJ & OJ arrived
on Friday 28. As expected the listening conditions have been quite bad so we do
not have a lot to report on that side. But we have been working hard on
recordings from September and October, since conditions have been quite good in
periods since KONG32.
But we are one man down! Arnstein left us 9 May 2016. For the last 20 years he was an essential member of the KONG-crew. We really miss him! RIP.
Last Friday the 1000-meter beverage at the old Loran C site was erected again. Looking at the GPS-tracking from walking along the antenna the job was not too bad (see below). The direction of the antenna is 305 degrees, i.e. towards the eastern part of the US (see below). The listening site is very quiet now that the old tower is down (during KONG32 we had terrible interference from the strobe light at the top of the mast). Now there is no man-made noise and the location is truly spectacular, with a panorama view over the Barents Sea. In a box at the south-east end we have a 12V battery-powered Intel NUC with a Perseus (with Jaguar), a 2 TB USB-powered harddisk and a Telia 4G modem, allowing us to remote control the setup and even listen in on what's going on up there. This setup uses about 1A so with a proper battery there is no problem to keep it running for days. But we need/want to change the disk every day so we change battery as well - just to be sure. As expected the noise floor is super-low and the signals surface a lot earlier than at Veines. Also, the signals are cleaner and more free from EU interference. A surprise is however than the fading is much stronger there than at Veines. Stations come and go a lot more on the 1000-meter antenna than on the shorter antennas.
Today the conditions have improved, so we hope for some interesting catches over the next days. Still, a few interesting stations have been heard since we came - mentioning WMIQ-MI 1450, KWHW-OK 1450, WJTI-WI 1460. Looking at the YAS-log from the Loran C-site, we may be able to find something interesting there too. We will know this afternoon when we have changed disk.
No KONG-expedition without good food! And KONG33 is no exception. Friday started off the best possible way. Bjarne had paid a visit to the king crab landing site in Berlevåg and brought with him super-fresh king crab - prepared the typical KONG-way with pasta carbonara. Probably the best king crab ever! Saturday continued with Salma-wok, Sunday with Bjarne's baked fish & macaroni, while Monday was stew-day - Irish stew - a new one for us. Ole had suggested we try this. We did - and it worked! Today is reindeer-day ... more about that later. Now off to some more listening!
See more about the current action at Veines in Bjarne's blog.