LEM112 DXpedition Report
November 21-29, 1997

DXpedition LEM112 was the first time ever when loggings from the world-famous Lemmenjoki site in Finland were published on the WWW. This happened on Dec. 10th 1997. What you see now is an improved and more detailed version of those pages - prompted by the positive feedback which I received back then. So, here it is, the story of my most successful DXpedition so far:

Expectations for the 112nd DXpedition to Lemmenjoki ran high, because solar activity was very low, and so we decided to leave a day earlier than originally planned. We drove through the night all the way to Lemmenjoki, 1200 kilometers to the north. As we arrived on midday Friday, we immediately noticed excellent reception conditions to North America. The biggest surprise was that we heard Mexican stations even in the afternoon local time, and on another day even until 1300 UTC, which had never happened before.

Jarmo Patala

On Sunday Nov. 23rd a major magnetic storm occurred, which turned the dial upside down. In the early morning at 0200 UTC we picked up more Kenyan stations than ever before. For the following few days there was hardly a single North American station on the AM band, but fortunately average conditions to Asia continued in the afternoons. On Wednesday, Nov. 26th, we returned from sauna around 1700 UTC and were amazed at the sudden upsurge of Taiwanese stations. Unfortunately, the timing was a bit too late for local station identifications.

North American stations made on comeback on Wednesday, and aside from 0600-0700 UTC (which was prime time for DXing Spanish stations), we pretty much stayed glued to North American stations from 0500 to 1200 UTC. Mexicans continued to be heard with strong signals, even though hardly anything was logged from the southern part of the U.S. Otherwise conditions to the rest of Latin America were much below average. At nights the trans-Atlantic signals were surprisingly few and weak.

The highlights were definitely Kenyan and Mexican stations, and the amazing number of graveyard stations from the U.S. - too many to mention here. For a closer look at our catches, browse the LEM112 DXpedition log. For some logging guidelines, check out notes on the log.

The participants were Mika Mäkeläinen and Jarmo Patala. In the picture above Jarmo is seen DXing... that's pretty much all we did aside from trying to keep warm, checking the antennae and getting 5-6 hours of sleep per day. This may sound utilitarian, but Lemmenjoki is not exactly your dream beach resort, so we tend to focus exclusively on DXing. And it does pay off: both of us identified 150-200 stations that were new to us (more than on any previous DXpedition), including about 20 stations which had never before been logged in Finland. By clicking equipment, you can find a description of our receivers and antennae.