by Mika Mäkeläinen

Borrowing a couple of receivers from friends, we had a total of four JRC NRD-535s, one JRC NRD-545 DSP and one Icom 8500. Additional equipment included amplifiers, antenna tuners and antenna switchboards. Both had a switchboard designed by Roland Sandberg to select the antennas and, if necessary, to split a particular antenna between two receivers. An "active splitter" was used to divide all the essential antennas between the listeners.

Now where does this wire go?

This time the Lemmenjoki cabin was equipped with 10 beverage (terminated) or longwire (not terminated) antennas. Additionally a couple of 300-meter-long wires to North America were available, without the usual 700-meter extension. Most of the antennas needed to be split between both users when conditions focused on a particular region of interest. For example, there was only one good antenna for the U.S. East Coast, one for the Iberian Peninsula and one for both the Southern part of South America. Since our antenna splitters were able to handle a maximum of nine antennas, that was the amount we used.

Jim's NRD-535 with a switchboard and an amplifier

Each antenna was 0.8 - 1.1 kilometers (0.5 - 0.7 miles) in length. Because of the reindeer, antennas needed to be 3-4 meters above the ground. Wherever trees are not available, poles have been erected. This time antennas were pointed at the following areas:

- Iberian Peninsula (240 degrees)
- Southern part of South America (Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile) and the United Kingdom (245 degrees)
- Northern part of South America (Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador) and the Caribbean (275/282 degrees)
- Eastern Coast of North America and Central America (290 degrees)
- Midwest (290, 297 and 312 degrees)
- Rocky Mountains (320 degrees)
- West Coast of North America (327 degrees)
- north towards Alaska and Hawaii (0 degrees)
- East Asia (China, Taiwan, the Philippines) at 80 degrees

Nothing new on the recording front; Mika relied mostly on minidiscs (Sony MDS-JE520 deck and a portable Sony MZ-R35), but also had a Pioneer CT-S330 cassette deck. Jim used portable cassette decks.