LEM104 DXpedition Report
January 4-11th 1997

Altogether three DXers took part in this Lemmenjoki DXpedition; Hannu Niilekselä from December 28th 1996 to January 11th 1997, Timo Reiniluoto from December 28th to January 4th and Mika Mäkeläinen from January 4th to January 11th 1997. Obviously, I will concentrate on the second half of that DXpedition.

As usual, nearly all DX-activity was concentrated on MW DXing, the favorite target being North American AM stations. Conditions to this area remained relatively good and steady most of the time, but were very general in nature, so that the usual dominants tended to be heard over and over again. There were only very few more narrow openings to specific areas, which was what we needed to identify stations that were new to us. Friday Jan. 10th offered a good opening to California. Conditions toward South America were poorer than average, and to Asia much poorer than average - this was probably my first ever DXpedition to Lapland which didn't result in any new Japanese AM stations for me.

All in all, the results for me were slightly below average, and I did expect a better outcome taking into consideration that we should have been experiencing solar minimum and exceptionally good AM reception. Anyhow, I was happy to identify several Kazakh local stations, especially Kustanay (684 kHz) and Vostozhno-Kazakhstanskoye oblastnoye Radio from Ust-Kamenogorsk (801 kHz). KTOB Petaluma CA on 1490 kHz was perhaps the most interesting catch from the Western hemisphere.

The entire log of the three participants has been published in DXclusive. Since I have only my loggings on the computer, only my loggings are listed in this LEM104 DXpedition log - they represent roughly one third of the total. For some logging guidelines, check out notes on the log.