KNL-10 Frank Thijs own experience about the last DX-pedition

My ninth DXpedition in Knollehof, Veurne, would be completely different. We would now leave during the daytime for our DX location. During the previous DX weekends, I left at 5am and drove most of the time in the dark. The visible environment was usually limited to the road you were driving on. Here and there you could see something of the area when traffic and lighting allowed you to take a look around.

The drive to Knollehof was pleasant, less traffic on the road, no peeping in the dark and it was as if the 'heavier' traffic had less of a morning mood or stress.

Stress, yes… it's something I experience every time a DXpedition announces itself. The 5 coax cables must be checked and repaired if necessary. An audio switcher had to be replaced, some cables had to be ordered and that did not go smoothly. Is everything okay with the external HDs and the laptop and PC? Is there a neighbour who can take care of my cat, Floshke, for a few days. Anyway, these are just a few concerns that can be solved almost immediately. In addition, there are also the questions of how the conditions will be and that was very bad for the many weeks before the DXpedition. Will it rain and storms, are there any deviations that will require me to drive through small villages? How are the fields? Will the antenna setup be a Sunday walk or will it be toiling, sweating, cursing and gruelling for mind and body? Well, this year it was especially gruelling and that especially during the tearing down of the antennas. The more I think about it, the more I feel the pain in my back and legs.

All those questions that made me restless and I'm not even talking about the health that was playing tricks on me a few weeks before the start of the listening pedition. Stress is not unknown to me, but it didn't stop me from starting the 200 km ride with a great desire and living the days in joy among skilled DXers.

Frank at his listening post

The closer I get to our DX location, the calmer I feel. The countryside of the Westhoek gives me a kind of spiritual peace. The silence, the desolation, the somewhat gloomy impression and above all the history of the region in which we spend a few days. A history that is perhaps not or not enough known by the younger people. A history where thousands upon thousands of men and women from all over the world from just about every continent fought and died. A history that is commemorated every year on November 11 in many countries, the history of Flanders Field. There, in Flanders Field, we have been meeting twice a year since 2017 to DX, but also to meet and live together.

The conditions were not good but for some, if not all, participants it is also a relief. The disruptions in our home locations are increasing and an improvement is hardly feasible. The lucky ones among us who have room for FLAGs, KAZ antennas or a beverage also enjoy their antennas less and less due to all kinds of interference that suppress the DX stations. Then a location such as Knollehof does offer the opportunity and the joy of fun stations, even if the conditions are not optimal.

Frank's favourite, Kastaar the local mascotte.

Hopefully I'll find some nice surprises on my recordings, but I'm already happy with some medium wave logs like Sudan and North Korea that I never heard before. Also Nigeria with a nice ID, as you can hear on a recording that Guido made, but Kuwait is also a station for me that I could not often put in the logbook. Hopefully they will answer my reception report.

My listening post consisted of a PC and laptop connected with a Perseus + Jaguar software and an external 4 TB hard disk. The beverages to North America, Argentina, Japan, Australia, Columbia and Africa plucked the radio signals from the air.

All in all, and despite my grumbling before and during the DXW weekend, I enjoyed the midweek. These are days of DXing, discovering, interacting and sometimes clashing, enjoying, looking ahead and looking back and making plans for the next session in Knollehof in Flanders Field.

Frank Thijs.

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KNL10 - Knollehof DXped 21-25 November 2022

KNL-10 was an edition with many obstacles. At first, this DXpedition was planned to go ahead on Thursday the 17^th of November and last until Monday the 21^st. Unfortunately at the very last moment we were informed that we couldn’t have access to the field where we normally put up our beverage antennas because of a hunting event.  This resulted in a lot of rescheduling work about the renting of the location, groceries orders etc, and of course the hassle for the participants. It was decided to move the DXpedition to Monday 21 to Friday 25/11. All this tuned out that Aart Rouw, Leen van Oeveren and Marc van Leemputten couldn’t re-organize their daily commitments to take part and only Jan Feenstra, Frank Huyghe, Frank Thijs, Marc Vissers and yours truly (Guido Schotmans) would take part. 

Still hunters on the field

Unlike previous editions, we started an extra day earlier so we could drive in daylight and didn’t end up in heavy morning traffic jam. This was welcomed by everyone. When we arrived at the scene, we noticed that there were still hunters on the field. Luckily it was just the end of their activity and moved further away after half an hour and we could start putting up the long beverage antennas.  We are experienced about that matter but they clay soil was very muddy and sticky making walking along the field heavy.  We accomplished erecting the North American beverage, the one to Argentina and the Japan beverage (all 300m long) just before sunset and just in time before the rain started to poor down.  But as often happens, we had to defy the rain to repair a connection on the Argentina beverage.  The more shortwave and utility orientated guys were buzzy putting up the LZ1AQ antenna, a Sony AN1 and a vertical.

We were ready for our first DX-hunt in the night. Soon it became clear that after the previous years of extraordinary great DX-catches, we will have to re-adjust our expectations with the solar cycle going into the higher figures. Logging Australia (see report HERE) and 10 different Japanese stations (see report HERE) wouldn’t be possible with this kind of propagation. In fact reception on the North American antenna turned out to be extremely noisy and it would stay that way the whole week long. There was also not much variation in signal levels. Almost constant low values. On the Argentina antenna, a nice clear log was made of Radio Super Boa Vontade on 1350 kHz and maybe there are still other things hidden in the files we have to analyse.

Super R Boa Vontade

Guido Schotmans · Super R Boa Vontade 1350 kHz 2022 - 11 - 2123 UTC

Next morning we had to complete our beverage antenna farm. The 400m reversible Australia/Colombia beverage and the and the non-terminated beverage to Africa. Later in the evening, the Africa antenna brought logs from logs from Sudan on 765 kHz and Gotel, Nigeria on 917 kHz. Dutch R Monique on 918 kHz spoiled the possibility to catch R Benue, Nigeria. Bad luck while a week earlier it was not on the air.

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Antenna work at the revesible Beverage

Of course there was also time for musing about antennas, receivers, computers and the issues involved with it. Talking about computer issues… One time I decided to reboot my laptop but it kept going into automatic recovery with no solution. Luckily I had taken the HD caddy along so I was able to move a recovery file and solve it. Another luck was that this didn’t happen during critical DXing hours.

For food we had the regular Chinese take away. It was popular once again. Hugo Matten, our local DXer and contact had the very nice habit to provide with tasty Belgian waffles. Thanks Hugo !

Before the last night we decided to move around the unterminated Africa beverage into the other direction and making it a terminated beverage. A good move while this delivered us a very nice and strong signal of Radio Gotel, Nigeria on 917 kHz with an ID song. ID’s are quite seldom on that station.

 Radio Gotel, Nigeria at excellent strength. 

Guido Schotmans · R Gotel (song And ID), Jabura - Modire, 917 kHz 2022-1 -24 - 2208 UTC

Other nice logs were Radio Paraguay on 920 kHz, KCBS, Pyongyang on 819 kHz with their National Anthem. 

Friday was our last day and antennas had to be taken down again. Not such an easy task while we got plenty of rain during the night and the fields were transformed more or less into muddy pools. Even after afterwards walking several hundreds of meters along the road, mud was still sticking tightly on the boots.

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Frank seems to be impressed by the Jaguar software - We are Jaguars ! What else.

Several hours later we arrived all well and safe home but tired and computers disks with lots of files to be analysed.  If anything extraordinary jumps out you’ll hear it here.

Thanks again to the owners of Vakantiewoning Knollehof for re-arranging our stay at very short notice.

More pictures HERE. 

Edit:

A few nice not so common logs discovered by Marc Vissers:

2022-11-22 0559 828 kHz AZR Antena 1, Monte das Cruzes, Antena Um ID, time, news // 666, 720 etc.

2002-11-23 0645 576 kHz CNR RNE Radio Nacional, Mesas de Galaz, Regional ID "Radio Nacional de España, Canarias".

2022-11-24 0645 972 kHz MLL RNE Radio Nacional, Melilla, Regional ID "Radio Nacional de España Melilla".

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Signals had difficulties getting through the clouds. 😀