KNL-16 DXpedition Report (1-5 December 2025).

On the 1st of December, we arrived on site around mid-day.

Field conditions were favourable this year, with no mud or heavy ploughing as encountered on previous expeditions. This allowed for a smooth installation of the first set of receiving antennas. Deployed were the 300° North American Beverage, the reversible ARG/JAP Beverage, and the African BOG (Beverage On Ground).

 

Other participants deployed the following antennas: Vertical 9 metre with balun, LA-1 van Dijken loop, 1090Mhz antenna, Active L-Band 1525-1660 antenna, Vertical 7,- m, T2FD or13 MHz and a Sony AN1.

 

On the following day, the Far East / Colombia reversible Beverage antenna was installed. With this final deployment completed, the receiving site was fully operational.

Initial monitoring was severely affected by wideband QRM. Extensive troubleshooting followed: all feedlines and terminations were checked, laptops and other potential noise sources were powered down, and a systematic RFI hunt was carried out using a portable receiver both indoors and in the field. Persistent QRM was present throughout — until the small house was investigated. After switching off the halogen lighting, the noise floor dropped very dramatically, resulting in a largely clean MW band.

 

It was later noted that the Deepelec DP-666 is not suitable for MW-QRM hunting, as its display generates noise, potentially leading to false conclusions during RFI investigations.

 

Consequently, the first night produced little of interest beyond the usual power stations.

 

Geomagnetic conditions were poor, and propagation forecasts suggested a preference for southern paths. African trans-equatorial paths, however, underperformed — possibly also due to limited monitoring time spend and the shrinking number of active MW broadcasters in that region. In contrast, the Argentine Beverage delivered consistently more results.

 

Unfortunately, for several years now, antenna deployment during the hunting season has been prohibited on the surrounding fields which results that the chances to end up in the "Winter Anomaly" is a real bugger, and this expedition clearly reflected that limitation. Signals frequently hovered just above the noise floor, with only brief enhancements lasting a minute or so. So you had to be lucky to be able to grab an ID in these cases. Nevertheless, it remains remarkable that even weak signals can still exhibit acceptable intelligibility under favourable noise conditions. Several stations, provided just sufficient audio for tentative or positive identification.

 

For the first time, a temporary FMDX.org remote server was brought online at the site. It utilised an oddly shaped antenna that had originally been intended as a ground-plane but proved usable as a receive antenna.

 

Medium-wave propagation showed gradual improvement, particularly on the Argentine Beverage, where signal levels increased in small but noticeable steps over the days.

 

The final day offered improved South American propagation. Signals from Argentina and Brazil were present across the band, generally weak but with occasional short-duration peaks — unfortunately often outside ID windows. As a result, many more stations were detected than ultimately logged, due to the absence of positive identification.

 

Notable catches with ID included R Atual, São Paulo, Brazil, on 1230 kHz. The station had changed its name from Boa Vontade to R Atual only one month earlier, and it had not previously been logged from this location under either identity.

Further First-logged stations were: Radio San Genaro, San Genaro Norte, Argentina, on 1550 kHz, Radio Durazno, Uruguay, on 1430 kHz

 

On 4 December, a strong candidate signal was detected that could only correspond to Universo 970, Paraguay. The measured carrier offset matched perfectly; however, no spoken ID was heard. This station has been logged 26 times in MWList worldwide during the current year, yet only three of those logs include a positive ID, underlining the difficulty of confirmation.

 

Dave, Jan, Aart, Leen, Cornel, 

Guido, Stef and Frank. 

We were pleased to welcome Stef as part of the team. He provided assistance in a wide range of practical tasks in the field, the kitchen, the stove,etc, and shared valuable knowledge. As a newcomer to the Jaguar SDR user group, he also benefited from extensive exchanges with experienced Jaguar users.

 

It was equally rewarding to observe Frank’s home-designed and home-built NAVTEX receiver in operation, demonstrating excellent performance in real-world conditions.

 

Leen caught some nice Fax pictures shown below.

Boston – 12750 kHz

Wiluna – 15615 kHz

On Friday, KNL-16 officially came to an end. The dismantling process — including the recovery and rolling in of several dozen reels of wire and coaxial cable — proceeded efficiently. All participants returned home safely. Several members left with storage media full of SDR recordings awaiting detailed post-expedition analysis.

 

While propagation conditions were occasionally uninspiring, the expedition nevertheless yielded a number of valuable catches. Moreover, it remains likely that additional weak or unidentified signals are still hidden within the recordings.

 

Many thanks to all participants whose efforts contributed to the success of this MW-DXpedition.

KNL-15 DXpedition (7-11 February 2025)

With some delay, here is the report from our latest DX-pedition to Knollehof in Veurne, Belgium. 

We started on Friday the 7th. Weather was fine and putting up the antennas was going fine, also because we had an hour extra of daylight compared to last December.  All antennas were up and running on day one. BTW, Martin Hall's trick to use a 9V battery+ LED to measure continuity of the beverages was very helpful. 

Continuity test of the Beverage 

We had just like the previous edition a beverage to North-America (300°), a BoG to Africa (150°) a reversible 2 wire beverage to Japan/Argentina (45/225°) and Far East/Colombia (80/260°). Other antennas could be spotted like Jan's Vertical 9,- m, LZ1AQ, KAZ and Van Dijken LA1, Leen's Vertical 7,- m, T2FD for 13 MHz and inverted V for 9 MHz and higher and Frank Huyghe's Sony AN1.

The crew was exactly the same as in December. 

Medium Wave conditions target seems to focus still more or less on South America. Far-East was almost completely dead and we heard also a few Africans but not the hoped South Africans stations. Signals were clearly better than the previous stay there but not yet as we would like to see it. 

We were also suffering from QRM from PSU's and HDD's that we could reduce for some part but not efficient enough. Plans are made to pinpoint this in much more detail next time. 

Attempting to reduce QRM from the ext HD by
covering it in Alu foil. It helped but not enough

The night of the 9th was focusing on Argentina and Brazil and the10th was the better one for North-America. Strange was that the 11th North America was also quite good on the ARG-antenna. Propagation will stay a mystery for ever I suppose. 

But sometimes, DX signals haven't to be the most exotic to be interesting. Take for example this interesting announcement from VOCM seeking for a new Broadcast technician. Somebody here might be interested. 

Guido Schotmans · VOCM Saint John's NL 590U 2025-02-11 02'02'17 KNL

A full MW-log report be extracted from https://dxing.fi/log/ by Logging in with your MWList credentials, selecting Listening date from 7 to 11 February and select BEL as logging country.

Our Knollehof DXped First logs for this edition.

[]