A DXpedition requires a lot of preparation. Can the location be rented or are there other tenants who want to experience a commemoration about The Great War? After all, we are in the middle of Flanders Field where thousands of soldiers were stationed, where they got hurt or lost their lives. They came from countries that we now consider DX. North Americans but also Australians, Kiwis, Indians, Africans.
How the field is doing is another question. Has the rain created a sticky mud that sticks to the boots and drives our weight up by a few kilos? Has the freezing cold transformed the field with some kind of concrete? Or how will conditions behave knowing that the days or weeks leading up to the DX weekend were erratic? These are questions that haunt us.
On Friday the 12th of November, 9 avid DXers gathered at Knollehof Vacation House for KNL-08. It was almost 2 years since we have been there cause of Covid-19 restrictions. And even this time we had our concerns while figures were going again in the wrong direction. Luckily it was possible to take place but we took several measures to be on the safe side.
Friday morning I left home at 7 am local time for the 150 km ride, but some of us had to drive a lot further while they were coming from the central region of the Netherlands, and Aart coming from Germany had over 600 km to do.
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Frank Huyghe, Guido Schotmans, Jan Feenstra, Frank Thys, Leen van Oeveren, Han Hardonk, Aart Rouw, Marc van Leemputten and David Onley |
Traffic was low while it was public holiday in Belgium and the weather was fine. Setting up the antennas was also easy this time because the state of the field has never been so good, despite the unfortunate lack of a DXpedition pioneer, who suffers a lot from back problems, the arrangement of the beverages went smoothly. Only drawback was that the WD-1A military wire we use is old, getting fragile and breaking more often than we used to see.
Around midday, most antennas where up. We had a reversible beverage towards the Far East and Peru (80/260°), one to Japan (40°) and one to North America (300°). There was still wire, poles and coax enough to erect the Alaska antenna but conditions over the poles had been reported to be very lousy. So this stayed in the car. Other antennas were a longwire, a KAZ, a LZ1AQ loop and a multi-band and a Sony AN1.
As mentioned, conditions turned out to be lousy, but we were very supersized to see that still 3 Japanese stations were heard on Medium Wave (1350 JOER, 1278 JOFR and 1134 JOQR). Also Radio La Verdad from the Philippines was heard with a weak signal on 1350 kHz. The always so strong KBS Korea on 972 was extremely weak what made us wonder if they are really on full power.
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| Musing about antennas. |
Participants where also surprised by a quiz that seemed to be a bit difficult, but after all, it was meant to produce a ranking for no less than 7 small portable short-wave radios to give away. The largest one, a Sangean ATS-803 was going as the first prize to Aart Rouw. Besides that, everybody got a vintage Deutschlandfunk pennant. Generous donor was John Bernaerts. He is also always doing several tasks behind the scenes like placing orders and commands for this event. We're very grateful for his effort.
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Aart Rouw was the proud winner of the firts prize of the DX-quiz. |
A few of us took the opportunity to visit the nearby picturesque city of Diksmuide. A little city that suffered a lot during the first world-war.
Under normal circumstances we will be at Knollehof again in early February.
