Monday, 15 September 2014
Kenwick Top DX Trip: 15-09-14
It's been a week of teasing tropo. True enough there were some good catches, but the conditions reminded me of this summer's sporadic E season: Just when reception starts to build, it falls away again! Kenwick Top had been calling out my name for a while but I wanted to wait until all hints of tropospheric activity had passed. I wanted conditions to be just right as my plan is make more regular trips to this summit, so the band needed to be as flat as possible in order to assess how things are up there in a worst case scenario.
First things first. No radio trip would be complete without one or two famous Faulkner fiascos and this trip had its fair share. I forgot several cables, the all-important antenna clamp. antenna base, a couple of plugs and sockets, etc. Yes, it was a familiar Faulkner field trip, full of foul-ups and faux-pas. Perhaps I could be excused on this occasion ...
A couple of hours before leaving home I developed a migraine. My second within a week. I have been a life-long sufferer and my migraines always lead to loss of vision with those infamous nauseating zig-zag light displays in my eyes. Sometimes I suffer numbness in my limbs and once I even lost the ability to speak. Migraines are, after all, mini strokes. Thankfully, a dose of soluble co-codamol tablets stop those evil headaches and I can sometimes continue with regular activities within an hour of taking the medicine, though it feels like my head is in a bowl of pea soup.
A brief rest left me with little time to pack the equipment in the car, connect and test it, as I usually do before playing radio. This way I forget a lot less. I was on the verge of calling it off, but I did not want to let down my friend Phil who was coming along with me to get first hand experience of my radio activities. Phil is not a radio enthusiast but I knew he would at least find it half-interesting as he too is a self-confessed geek.
Now quite late, I dropped Jane, my wife, into town to meet her friend Emma, then Phil and I sped to Kenwick Top. With a bit of luck we would have at least half an hour to do some listening before I had to dash back home.
Kenwick Top is a local high spot, some 20 miles north-west of my home in Skegness and a half-hour drive. It is on the edge of the beautiful Lincolnshire Wolds and has a sea view from north-east through to south-east. Although it's hardly mountainous at only 91 metres above sea level, it is one of the highest spots for miles around and the take-off makes it a prime DX hotspot with superb reception in all directions. The only drawback is its close proximity to the Belmont mast, just a few miles to the west, and the signal levels will de-sensitise some receivers.
After bodging up my receiving station (and that's no exaggeration!) everything was working 100%. Phew! My foresight into taking along copious amounts of gaffa tape was commendable, though I say so myself, as it held together so many things which would otherwise have fallen apart. Time to fire up the XDR-GTK software and Bandicam (screen recording software) so I can record the whole session.
With conditions well below average and this being an evening DX session (aircraft scatter is usually less frequent during the evenings) I was more than pleased with the results. Some of the regular nearer continental stations were struggling or absent altogether, while some of the more distant scatter stations were received quite well. You can hear Antenna Thuringen from Remda on 107.6 very clearly. You can also hear HR4 from Heidelstein in Bavaria on 107.3 and Brocken's MDR1 is clear on 94.6, plus many other continental goodies. There is also a tentative BB Radio from Berlin on 107.5 (currently seeking verification of this), which will be a Kenwick Top aircraft scatter distance record if confirmed.
One minor drawback with Kenwick Top is the additional stations from inland which can be heard there. The band has more English activity than at my home location.
The video above contains over half an hour of pure unadulterated DX footage. But let this serve as a warning to those DXers who are brave enough to venture to new heights to get their DX kicks - things just aren't the same when you return home to your domestic DX dial. Oh, if only they were!
John Faulkner
Kenwick Top, Lincolnshire. 91m asl
Equipment:
Receiver: Sony XDR-F1HD with Konrad i2c modification
Software: Konrad XDR-GTK
Aerial: Triax FM5 on 10m mast
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