Niihama back on the map!

Our Niihama dx-cabin is in full action again, after almost 9 months of wide timber work in the antenna forest and at the same time lack of electricity because of our land lord´s building site nearby. In August Tampere DX club activists organized 4 installing sessions to bring back all the in mid-winter away collected antennas: Excellent C2C NA-beverage of 430 metres directed to 316° and little bit noisier but anyway fine working SA-beverage of 870 metres to 278° were returned to the very same paths they used to be erected earlier.

Our also fine working AS-beverage couldn´t any more been installed to the old corridor while our land lord´s new building now stays right on the line. So using a little bit longer coaxial feeding cable a totally new path was determined, but beverage´s direction and length remain almost unaltered: 320 metres to 60°.  A new La Plata -beverage was also installed, some 6° more northern and more than 200 metres longer than earlier: 710 metres 254°.

Very first listening experience in the beginning of September are most promising: Hours spent to keep antenna directions straight, connections sure and sheltered and enough grounding copper hided to each end of every beverage seems to be worth of all that job. On the background for proper working beverages there are also plenty of many years field investigations work to optimize antenna matching units, noise reduction gadgets and beverage terminating resistors, lead by club´s technical experts JPF and MDK.

Chilean stations have been very rarely heard in our dx-cabin earlier, but now right in the beginning of new antennas testing some nice catches very made from direction 256°:

930	3.9.	0300-	CHL: CB93 Radio Nuevo Mundo, Santiago
1020	3.9.	0300-	CHL: CC102 R Amica, Talca
1060	3.9.	0300-	CHL: CB106 R Maria, Santiago
1270	6.9.	0300-	CHL: CB127 Radio Festival, Viña del Mar

Also other nice MW-stations have been already heard from Latin America and not forgetting Thai, Philippine and other Far-East stations. Stay tuned to On Line Log to find out more http://log.hard-core-dx.com/,  and of course on the MW-band too. More catches from LA and AS will be hunted for, and season´s first real NA conditions are expected to arrive soon!

73 JVH

Foto 1: DX Club chairman JKZ installing Latin American 278° beverage back to the heights in August 2016. Foto JVH.

Foto 2: Hard-core grounding digging in Niihama antenna forest, from left JMV, JPF, MDK and PMA. Foto JVH.

Niihama CASA updated

December 2013 edition of Central and South American MW-stations catched in Niihama dx-cabin of Tampere DX Club  is now updated: please click ”Logged CA/SA 6.1.2016” at Niihama DX of this blog. The sunspot maximum of the current cycle 24 will very likely be determined to April 2014, so MW cx haven´t been so fruitful as before 2013. Moreover, in the ”antenna forest” landlord has realised some logging and so number of beverages have been reduced since January 2014, which inevitably affects to the amount of MW loggings.

 

Total count of CA stations (Central America and the Caribbean) is 118, only 5 more than two years ago. Luckily to more southern directions there has been little more cx windows beside those so many solar cycle origin interferences. Balancing fewer cx automated remote whole MW band recordings have reduced the presence at the cabin and listening live, but also later on given a better awareness of the cx content, and given more stations, also 40 new FFN. La Plata –listening has never been active in Niihama, contrarily, but now solar maximum cx has finally given us Uruguay as a new country (R Continental 1600/ JPF) and more than doubled our tiny Argentinian haul from 6 to 14. By far the most rewarding day for this period has been January 21^st 2014, when JKZ exploring the N-trawl enjoyed special Medellín cx with even 18 new FFN-stations!

 

I hope, in addition to Niihama statistical value, this CASA sheet will serve as a help list in whole southern Finland for the most likely stations from Latin America.

73 JVH