This DX site was created to let fellow dxer's know what we are up to while on DXpeditions in our former Walsoorden site (HOL) and the new site near Veurne, West Flanders, Belgium. We hope it inspires other dxers to try DXpeditions.

We travel to such locations to escape noise and to be able to put out long beverage antennas. Something we cannot do from home. DXpeditions take place several times a year. Usually in winter. Dxer's from Belgium and The Netherlands take the opportunity to dx from such rural dx location.

Are you interested in future dx trips? Get in touch with us. Send an email to us. We are always happy hearing from dxer's from other countries.


Tuesday, March 24, 2015

WAL-23 MW logs

We're finally through the files.  Although conditions were lousy during this DXpedition, we managed to here a few first-timers, like Radio Senda 1680 from the Dominican Republic, WGVU Kentwood MI on 1480, WKCK R Cumbre 1470 ,Orocovis from Puerto Rico,  HIAK R Impactanto 1440, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and CHRF Radio Fierté 980 AM le 80 Montreal QC. So after all it was worth to do the trip and spend the many many hours analysing the files. 

The complete log file can be downloaded here.

Radio Fierté and Radio Cumbre were kind enough to send a QSL verification mail.





Tuesday, February 3, 2015

WAL-24



Here is the story of the WAL20 team that was present last weekend in Walsoorden. They are more Utility oriented.



Met Walsoorden 2 is gisteren het winterseizoen van de DX-weekends afgesloten. We waren met vier; John, Frank, Leen en ikzelf. Door onvoorziene omstandigheden moest Jos tot zijn en onze grote spijt afhaken. Ondanks de gure  weersomstandigheden in de dagen voordien, konden we  vrijdag onze opstelling doen onder een stralende zon en met windstil weer.

Het antennepark van de Walsoordensite is zo al indrukwekkend; wij hebben er nog een achttal opstellingen  aan toegevoegd en konden zo beschikken over :
  • de twee beverages van de vorige ploeg, nml  de 60° Asia en  de 290°  N.America
  • de longwire  van 40 m, die deze keer werd gemonteerd op 2 stevigere  telescoopmasten in de voortuin langs de straat
  • twee TTFD's aan de masten van de longwire ( 21.9 mHz en 9 mHz) eveneens langs de straat
  • de paOrdt Mini-whip die nu werd opgesteld op de drassige weide, even voorbij het gebouw en dus ook op grotere afstand ervan (hoogte ong. 10 m) op telescoopmast
  • de AN-1 van Frank in de voortuin langs de beek
  • de Ala-1530 loop midden in de  tuin
  • een TTFD van Leen (ong. 15 mHz) eveneens langs de beek.
  • tenslotte nog de kruisdipool van John voor satellietontvangst, op het zomerterras.

Van het vaste antennepark heeft John ook nog gebruik gemaakt van de K9AY-antenne die achteraan naast het veld staat opgesteld, al was dat niet meteen een succes.

In onze ploeg bestaat belangstelling voor MG (Navtex en Broadcast) en KG (WX-fax en Broadcast).

De condities waren bij wijlen vrij goed richting Azië, met een paar zeer goede periodes richting Z-O-Azië (in de vooravond)  en in zekere mate ook Australië.(zie  aangehechte file JJC-Kyodo-News).  Een Wellington-log (New Zealand) zat er evenwel niet in deze keer.  De 60° was daarbij een luxe, maar de Mini-whip deed het uitzonderlijk goed, evenals de TTFD van 9 mHz, die nu eens echt helemaal naar mijn goesting kon worden opgesteld (qua hoogte en inclinatie).  De TTFD van 21.9 mHz die we voor het eerst uitprobeerden in vrije ruimte, ontgoochelde daarentegen meestal. De longwire deed grillig; was overdag vrij goed zowel op KG als op MG, maar viel bij avond en nacht compleet weg in de ruis.

In westelijke richting had ik gehoopt te kunnen rekenen op de N-Amerika-beverage, voor nachtelijke Navtex, maar dat viel flink tegen; dus geen TA-logs dit jaar; op KG was ze wel bruikbaar tot 8 à 9 mHz, maar ze was nooit beter dan de alternatieven, zeg maar de 9 mHz TTFD en de Mini-whip. Deze laatste bracht ons in de late uren een evengoed resultaat op KG als de 9 mHz TTFD: we konden dus CBV-Valparaiso Meteo (Chileense Westkust) en KVM-Honolulu Meteo  (Hawaï-eilanden) binnenhalen met twee valabele alternatieven. Nog nooit voorheen meegemaakt! (zie hieronder)

CBV-Valparaiso Meteo (Chileense Westkust) - 8677 kHz

KVM-Honolulu Meteo  (Hawaï-eilanden) - 11090 kHz

Kyodo News - JJC_ - 8467 kHz


Voor mij was de eindconclusie zoals meestal : je kan je uiterste best doen om bij het bouwen en opstellen van antennes geen al te grote vergissingen te begaan, de prestaties ervan zie je op terrein en die zijn meestal vrij bevreemdend! Ik weerhoud dat het correct opstellen van een T2 toch wel belangrijk is en ook dat je met de mini-whip liefst zover mogelijk van gebouwen verwijderd blijft  en toch wel een tiental meter hoog moet zitten. Die mini-whip was zo'n beetje de verassing van het week-end.

Ook het afbreken van de antennes verliep droog, hoewel het zondagvoormiddag gegoten had... we hebben dus geluk gehad! Bij  het opruimen van de beverage 300° kwam ik tot de vaststelling dat 200 m coaxkabel wel echt het maximum voor een haspel is. Omdat ik dat niet meteen bij de start  in de gaten had, en wellicht niet strak genoeg had aangetrokken, kwam ik tegen het einde in de problemen en moest op het gras nadien de boel herwinden... maar ik had weer een ervaring meer!

Het was een gezellig en geslaagd week-end; nog eens hartelijk dank aan vooral John en Guido, die dat steeds weer en opnieuw mogelijk maken.

73, Frans - DXA238







Wednesday, January 21, 2015

A few pictures from Walsoorden

The surrounding : on the far left you see the DXing house


The South-American beverage. In the background you see some participants working on the antennas. And in the far background machines are working on a now dike.

Overview of several beverage antennas

The ALA 1530 used for SW frequencies
Dave connecting his SDR-receiver to the antenna splitters
Leo needs a bit of fitness practice before hitting the bands


The splitters once again


Marc's Antenna Switch for the Beverages
The Beverages


Guido checking the performance of the antennas


Leo is multitasking. Navtex and SW DXing



Walsoorden mosquitoes to make the Nordic and Finnish DX feeling complete.


Our DX-location

Our spiritual leader and masquot John Plimmer was also once again present.

Monday, January 19, 2015

Day 4 - the final one

Monday was the last day of our DX trip and we decided to leave early to avoid the Antwerp traffic jam. Everything was packed by 11:30 local time.

During sunrise we noticed stations were fluctuating up and down at the lower end op the band. 570 didn't know to decide if it would R Reloj let through or an English speaking one. 580 gave good CFRA reception and on 590 VOCM was almost not present. That might be a channel to watch for other stations.

It was once again nice to have a stay at Erik's DX house were we can put up such long beverage antennas that almost nobody in our region is able to do. And sitting together with other right minded DXers is always fun.

Thanks to everybody that did take part and also thanks to our followers.  

In the next few weeks more about our tinned catches will become available here.

Our spiritual inspirer John Plimmer was there to encourage us.





Day 3

Conditions on Sat-Sun night were slightly better.  Yesterday there was almost no 590 VOCM, but this time they were strong now and than giving signals like a local. Also 930 CJYQ (not CFBC), 1130, 1510 were on. A bit later 1290 Pueto Cabello popped up. 1540 kHz gave strong signals with English talk and kind of Hindi songs in the background (CHIN?)

Morning condition opened a window to Central America. XEAI 1470 Radio Fórmula, Mexico with full ID at 0712UTC and 0730 and R 2000 on 1500 kHz at 0715.


The afternoon was once again very disappointing. Noise levels were high and a lot of channels were just empty. Even RTL 1440 was suffering from severe fading. But we had a short 2 minutes opening to VOA Thailand 1575 kHz at 1448 UTC.

Christoph Ratzer from Austria informed us that he had at least some readable reception from Solomon Islands Bc Corp on 5020 kHz. We were only able to see a spike on our SDR screens. That inspired us to put up an extra beverage of only 120 meters pointing to the Solomons. Hmm, it started to rain and snow at that moment but we nobody could stop us from doing that. Unfortunately, all this was to no avail. Both antenna's, the 400 and the 60 m beverage gave just a spike. But at least Dave heard a few nice Spanish MW stations on it. :-)

Early evening conditions turned up to be good again for a while until everything faded down again.

We heard some bits and pieces of Chinese on 1350 kHz coming over the Italian "I am Radio" pirate. 
On the North America antenna we had Noti Uno on 1280 and later VSB2 Hamilton, Bermuda.

These are all not the most exciting catches but we are glad to have them while we were afraid conditions would be worse and of course there is still a lot of work to do in analysing the recorded files.






Saturday, January 17, 2015

Day 2

Unfortunately conditions where quite dull during last night. It took some time before trans-Atlantic propagation finally took up a bit. Nothing was heard between 20:00 and 21:30 while usually we can hear the Newfoundland stations in that time slot.  Afterwards the regular ones like CBI 1140, WMEX 1510 and CFBC 930 delivered nice signals for a while. Also WDEA 1370, CBG 1400. Furthermore a few X-band stations were heard too, but afterwards, everything deteriorated again and we went to bed. Jaguar software shows a max J index of 17 around 0220 but listening at that time delivered not really anything special. During sunset, conditions stayed on the dull side. 

Today we have some of the regular Asians like RTI ILoveMusic 1557, AIR Rajkot 1071, AIR Magra 1134. We hoped to squeeze out something new on the frequencies that were vacated by NDR, Germany earlier this week but until now without success.
Where are the times we heard several Japanese stations in the afternoon...

Jaguar's Yas log screen showing activity on trans Atlantic channels

Friday, January 16, 2015

WAL23 kick off

We are up and running. We have beverage antennas to the Far East 60°, India 90°, South America 240° and North America 290°. We expected a very muddy field but the owner had put winter wheat on it and was kind enough to make no objections to trespass the field. Furthermore the weather was fine. Unfortunately we had an issue finding a bad connection in the extremely long coax for the south American beverage and our PMR devices didn't reach far enough to stay in contact. But after all it works now. The only thing we need now is better conditions.



And off course, after running on and off a lot of times along the beverages, we need some food. A terrific Chinese meal brought by Marc.

Dave, Marc and Guido

Marc, Guido and Leo



Thursday, January 15, 2015

One day to go for WAL23

One day to go. In the mean time the rain is pooring down a lot. Let's hope we don't need this one ot put up the beverage antennas.



Saturday, January 10, 2015

WAL23

WAL23 coming up in a week from now ! Let's hope the propagation finally changes for the better. We will be there on 16-17-18 and 19 January.