Monday, October 16, 2006

KONG15 Update - Sunday 15 Oct

The ionosphere works in strange ways. As I am writing this in the wee hours of Monday, the solar conditions have improved significantly, yet there is hardly a station to hear. While yesterday, with K-indices around 4-5, a tiny 1kW station on 880 decided that they wanted to be heard across the pole - hence the logging of KCMX Phoenix OR. Only 4-5 other stations audible at the time. How does things like that happen? Anyway, until the next corona hole arrives late this week we can only try to hear as much as possible.

I received an email regarding the lack of photos on the blog. Like photos of the radio shacks, the food we constantly brag about, the wine we appear to be drinking all the time; the red-eyed, five-day beard DX-ers... enough said! No photos! Only joking. Actually I have a few photos but my Nikon camera suffers from the proprietary-usbcable-forgotten syndrome, effectively blocking any attempts to transfer files to my laptop. The camera's owner (that's me) suffers from the always-forget-to-take-cable-with-me syndrome every time he's back home in Berlevåg. Believe me, there is no known cure for this.

Had there been a cure, you would have seen pictures of a dinner to remember - new-caught King Crab boiled in sea water with pasta carbonara. A delightful mix! We had a very nice Riesling white wine with the crab. Actually we forgot to make the hors d'æuvre (or antipasto which might have been a more appropriate term, the main course considered) but it was supposed to be served with a Cantina Zaccagnini red wine and we didn't forget that. And when we prepared all this we had a nice red from Argentina - Alamos.

Weather has been mixed, right now calm, clear and mild (around 4C); on Sunday afternoon gale force winds, rain and sleet and 2C.

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