KNL06 - Knollehof DXped 15-18 November 2019

Here is the report on our Knollehof DX-pedition with the usual delay. I really don’t know how the Nordic guys like Mika and Bjarne manage it to do those daily in depth reports while DXing, inspecting antennas, cooking etc. Hat off for you guys.

Most of us arrived on Friday around 8:30 local time at Knollehof in Eggewaartskapelle, a hamlet of Veurne . Luckily the weather was fine and the roads were dry so we all had a safe drive. The roads around Antwerp -where most of us have to pass- are famous for their huge traffic jams. The participants from The Netherlands had to drive 4 hours or more.

This time we had these attendees :  Frank Huyghe, Guido Schotmans, Jan Feenstra, Aart Rouw, Leen van Oeveren, Frank Thijs, Marc van Leemputten, Dave Onley, Han Hardonk and Marc Vissers.

Our dx-peditions are becoming more and more international. 4 participants are from Belgium, 3 from the Netherlands, 1 Belgian living in Holland, 1 Dutch living in Germany and 1 Aussie living in Holland.

FH, GS, JF, AR, LvO, FT, MvL, DO, HH and MV 

Once there we started right away building up our shacks and erecting antennas. We had 4 beverage antennas to put up : one reversible of 400 meters and 3 regular ones of 300 meters (go to the previous post to see the antenna directions). For the Japan beverage we needed 400 meters of coax, so all in all we had some physical exercise to do. Luckily the fields were not as muddy as we experienced a few times earlier. And we had luck. Everything worked right away. The other guys were busy putting up their own antennas like verticals, a KAZ, a LZ1AQ double loop, a T2FD and an AN1.

OK, power on, let’s start listening. Asian stations were coming in as early as 1350 UTC. Korea 972 kHz was already bombarding us with huge signals the last weeks and here it was even stronger. Other early birds were China Radio International on 1017, 1188 and 1323 and RTI on 1557. But that are real power houses of course. Soon Japanese stations started to appear. The “usual one” JOFR RKB Mainichi Hoso on 1278 was first. A few years ago

The early birds were not only human.

that was often all we could expect from Japan. Not now. Stations from the Land of the Rising Sun dropped in one by one. You need also a bit of knowledge. NHK Radio 2 stations are giving a nice local sign off ID at 1540 (Sa-Su 1530) including call sign and location followed by the Japanese National Anthem and a music box interval signal before they leave the air. Here is an example of the 10 kilowatt NHK Kanazawa which we caught on 1386 kHz. Luckily Radio Baltic Waves International from Lithuania is making a pause between 1430 and 1630.

As said Japanese stations are really a rarity at our mid latitudes. On extreme Nordic locations they are often heard, but here they are really seldom.  We managed to hear more than 10 Japanese stations!  That’s really pushing the limits.  Here is our list.

kHz	Station	Location	PWR	Dist Km
594	JOAK NHK Radio 1	Shobu/Kuki	300	9454
666	JOBK NHK Radio 1	Osaka/Sakai-Shi	100	9440
774	JOUB NHK Radio 2	Akita	500	9076
873	JOGB NHK Radio 2	Kumamoto	500	9391
1134	JOQR NCB Bunka Hoso	Tokyo/Kawaguchi	100	9484
1278	JOFR RKB Mainichi Hoso	Fukuoka	50	9296
1332	JOSF Tokai Hoso	Nagoya	50	9430
1350	JOER RCC Chugoku Hoso	Etajima/Okimi	20	9330
1386	JOJB NHK Radio 2	Kanazawa	10	9288
1413	JOIF KBC Kyushu Asahi Hoso	Fukuoka	50	9295
1440	JOWF STV Sapporo	Sapporo	50	8812
1449	JOYR RSK Sanyo Hoso	Okayama	10	9356

But not only Japan was good. Also Korea, of course lots of Chinese and Thailand with its new transmitter on 891 was heard very well. The latter one thankfully while the Dutch LPAM station Hotradio Hits was off the air that weekend.

Although results were superb, Spain is almost always much too strong on the back of the Japan beverage antenna.  Next time we’ll plan to isolate the 400m coax by using common mode chokes. Let's hope it has some effect.

The reversible beverage antenna pointing to Australia and Peru.

Conditions to North America were a bit disappointing compared to the Asian results. Maybe we have to dig a little bit further in the loads of recorded files that still have to be analysed. South America was nice on the reversible beverage. Frank T scored several personal first on that antenna. Propagation was favouring Colombia. A bit different from the previous edition of our DXpedition here. Nicest log must be Esperanza Colombia Radio on 1470 kHz at 1 KW night-time power.

Han was lucky getting Kuwait in DGPS. Furthermore he was continuously on top on the DSC ranking list using his LZ1AQ double loop that performed very well at his quiet location. Well done.

Han's LZ1AQ loop was running rather hot because he had nice DGPS logs and was continuously on top of the DSC ranking list.

For food the usual Chinese take away meals were served. Always the best solution when there are 10 participants and the DX-duty is calling. Nevertheless some of us took the time to visit the coast spotting the traditional shrimp fishermen on horses. Veurne city is also an interesting place to visit.

Traditional shrimp fishermen

Monday morning came to soon and we had to take down the antennas again. Unfortunately it started to rain. But even then it went smoothly and everything was packed soon so that most participants could get home before traffic jam started to build up.

In January we will be back scanning the airwaves at this ideal venue.

Further information about this nice holiday location near the Belgian coast can be found on this LINK. It’s an ideal locations for trips in the surrounding of West Flanders and is only a few km away from the French border.

Look also at my page of Japanese Broadcast QSLs
https://japanesebroadcastqsls.blogspot.com/ 

KNL06 - Knollehof DXped 15-18 November 2019

Preparation is under way for KNL06. All antenna wires and coax cables are checked and labeled. Propagation indices are low. Everywhere else, the radio community is complaining about this but we like that ! That's ideal for MW/AM band DXing. 4 Beverage antennas are planned. One of them is reversible.

More will follow here later. Some instant reports will be posted on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/knollehofdxped/

KNL05 - Knollehof DXped 11-14 January 2019

On January the 11th it was once again time to pack radio stuff and move to the West Coast of Flanders to put up our antennas and eavesdrop the airwaves for the most distant signals. Weather was fine so putting up the different antennas was going more or less without major issues.  At first sight, the fields where looking fine but still it turned out that the clay sticked tightly to our boots making walking around difficult.  This time we opted to move the (80-260°) reversible beverage antenna to 70-250°. It seemed to be not such a good choice while it’s performance was definitely lower than during previous editions of our DX-peditions here.  But it just could have been propagation as well. We also had some bad luck with a bad connection caused by a plug.

The North American antenna which we pointed previously to 290° was moved to 325°. We never before heard West coasters here and while solar cycle is at its low end and indices are also low, we would give that a try. Also a real Alaska antenna at 350° was erected and one for Japan at 40°. All were between 300 and 400 meters long. There was also an impressive number of other antennas like a verticals, KAZ, double LZ1AQ loop, Stampfl AD2 and an AN1.

Plenty of space for Beverage antennas, at least for Central European standards.

All participants arrived nice in time and gave the needed assistance to arrange everything: Marc Vissers, Frank Huyghe, Ron Liekens, Frank Thys, Leen van Oeveren, Jan Feenstra, me (Guido Schotmans), and newcomers Aart Rouw, Han Hardonk. As usual, Hugo Matten collected the shopping from the supermarket.

Newcomers Aart and Han

Somewhere in the afternoon we were ready to fire up our gear. At first sight it looked like several antennas were going to be much less productive and had almost all day long heavy signals from Spain, the stronger ones were not even disappearing during the day. And of course also way to much UK stations, but they are mostly in the same direction of our beverage antennas. Even Brexit isn't going to solve this 😄

But that was just a feeling I presume while as the dxpedition went by we had to reconsider our thoughts. There were not as much signal from the Far East as previously but then a few stations from Japan that were never heard before gave excellent signal. Amongst them JOER RCC Chugoku Hoso on 1350 kHz 

and JONR ABC Asahi Hoso on 1008 kHz that was only 2 weeks before vacated by the Dutch Groot Nieuws Radio. Also Kampuchea on 918 kHz was a nice Firstimer that just came out of the noise when playing their National Anthem.

On Saturday afternoon Aart yelled “Alaska” via our WhatsApp alarm line. And indeed, bits and traces where audible and we could verify that it really was KBRW on 680 by checking the online stream. But signal stayed unfortunately so low that almost nothing was understandable besides one or two words somewhere, and by the time we reached the top of the hour the Spanish adjacent channels was so strong that all signals on 680 where drowned. So it was clear that propagation wasn’t going to reach the levels it reached 2 or 3 weeks before when KBRW was even heard on an ALA loop antenna in central Europe. Although we had a specific Alaska beverage. But we need a challenge for next time.

No worries, there was still a lot to come.  As said above we moved our North America antenna from 290° to 325°. That was a big goal. This direction points to the West Coast, to Vancouver Canada to be precise. During live listening we already found that Spanish stations weren’t disturbing Trans-Atlantic channels as much as before and several stations from the Midwest where found at decent levels.  But when analysing files at home later, the big revelation came.  Especially Marc Vissers clung to the subject and found almost 40 “First logs” mostly from the Midwest but also several from the West-Coast and a few had really good strength.  In fact it was the first time we were able to hear Westcoasters during a DXpedition.

You can take a look at Marc's TA-Logs here.

Several other participant were busy testing other kinds of antennas and comparing software solutions. Trying to keep up with latest SDR-console possibilities is also always impressive.

Frank Huyghe, our FAX guru was a bit disappointed by the results he got in his hobby section.

And besides DXing, there is always time for good food and drinks and exchanging ideas about this most interesting hobby.

Next appointment at Knollehof will be next November.

A lot more about our DXpedition can be found on this FB-group.

A few Japanese QSL received by Frank Thijs

Frank Thijs provided a few nice Japanese QSL's he received for reports of stations he put in his log for the Knollehof DXped site.

JOFR - RKB Radio 1278 kHz

JOUB - NHK 2 - 774 kHz

JOWF - STV Radio - 1440 kHz