Monday, 5th August 2013: Utö13 is over - 2014 booked up

 Utö13 is over. Antennas were dismounted around 11.00 and the crew left the island at 13.15 with Eivor-ferry.
This session was succesful on SDXL Annual meeting, totally 40 participants. Everybody were very satisfied and it was fun.
The FM-conditions during the past week were not so good, but no much was also expected at this time of the year: We had south France-opening for 1h and also some tropo, even to Kaliningrad weakly.
Photo below: FUN Radio Besancon (25) France by OSY, Otso Ylönen.

Utö14 will be again next year for 5-15.6.2014. That is already booked up.

Photo above by JUS

Sunday, 4th August: Very short peaks to Italy, Greece and Germany

SDXL Annual Summer Meeting 2013 is over and over 30 participants left the island after midday. 6 listeners still left for one day to DX in the camp. We had very short peak to Italy, Greece and Germany before midday and some stations were logged, like ErreVuTi from Arezzo (Italy) on 90.1 MHz, Dionysos from Katerini (Greece) on 89.2 MHz and Rock Antenne, Ismaning (Bayern, Germany) on 87.9 MHz.
The Sherlock-map looked better than what we got as MUF. The camp will be dismounted on Monday around 11.00 for the summer.
In the evening there were no conditions, so we played frisbee. Cabin A-team (JMS,HKU,JUS) beated Cabin B-team very badly. Cabin B (JTK, JJS, TAK) had no chance and they losed all periods: 10-6 / 5-2 / 5-1. Frisbee-golf game was won by JTK.
Sunday-Monday night we had some tropo-peaks: Love Radio from Kaliningrad was id'ed on 102.9 MHz with network programme. KAL is very rare even in Utö.

Photo below: This is the result of the developing technology like Perseus. It is "Katiska-kuuntelu" in Finnish,(Fish)Trap-listening in English. We collect many stations with one recording. Here is katiska (=fish-trap) connected to Jim's Perseus. Click the photo (by JUS).

Saturday, 3rd of August: South France

Right after SDXL Summer Meeting official programme after 6pm we had nice opening to South France giving several new stations and also some Spanish signals.
Forexample departements 25, 30, 34, 74, 01 and even 66 at the Spanish boarder were up!! Nice surprise for the evening lasting about 1h!

Saturday, 3rd of August: SDXL Annual Summer Meeting 2013 is going on

Late yesterday evening the rest of the DX-meeting crew arrived to the island, Totally around 40 participansts are now present. We already had late-night card-games and sausage. This Saturday is full of DX-programme and also our guide Hanna Kovanen will tell us more about lighthouse and history of Utö.
Photo below: Blue/white "DX"-flag is rising up for the start of the meeting.

Photo below: VJR (Vesa-Jussi Rinkinen) built up 5-element yagi for Baltia-, Sweden- and Poland-DX right outside his hotel room.

Friday, 2nd August: Weak France for 4-5 minutes

Both houses are now full with 8 DXers. In the afternoon we had very short opening to France: (close to Paris etc.) at 11.45utc.
Loggings from France:
88.4 Horizon, Sainte Genevieve des Bois (91)
88.7 Rire et Chansons, Étampes-tx (dep 91)
88.8 Evasion (also RDS,  77)
89.0 Hélène FM, Surgères (17)
89.0 France Culture, Le Mans-tx (72)
91.1 France Musique, Niort-tx (79)

Russian DXers Omar and Alexander (right) visited our DX-site on Friday. They come from St Petersburg and are participating SDXL summer meeting in Utö.

Saturday morning: Sacrifice for Essi

In the morning JMS and JTK made commited sacrifice for Essi (=Sporadic E) to call up Es-condition for the weekend. On the photo below you can see the guys in front of Utö-sandwich and Spanish Corona 10-brandy on the plate. This deep ritual consisted humble kneeling towards southwest with long lasting low throat-humming in Spanish.
  We will see if this ritual brings us good opening to Spain and Portugal. Click the photo.
(The guy on the left (JMS) is leading FM-DXer in Finland and on the right (JTK) is the chairman of SDXL, Finnish DX Association).

Friday, 2nd August: More DXers in Utö

FM-DXers JMS (Jim Solatie) and JTK (Jukka Kotovirta) joined the FM-DX-camp on Thursday evening and also around 10 others DXers arrived to the island - also two Russian DXers who already visited the FM-camp. Luckily we had short opening on OIRT. Some photos of the visitors etc later here.

The official SDXL summer meeting starts this evening. JTK (SDXL chairman) was on the air live on YLE Radio Åboland (national Swedish language network in Finland) on Friday morning telling about DXing and our Utö-meeting.

The forecat maps on tropo does not look good for the coming days and Sherlock map is giving nothing for Friday morning.

Thursday, 1st August: Brief Italian peaks

During the morning we observed 2-3 short Es-peaks towards Italy. Local and semilocal tropo-stations are interfering weak Es. Two new listerners will join the crew around 18.00 in the evening and the camp is full. JTK (Jukka Kotovirta) and JMS (Jim Solatie, here for the first time) will connect the receivers to the system.
Also many other DXers arrived to the island around 18.00 in the evning. The SDXL Annual summer meeting starts on Friday and over 40 participants will be at present in Utö (2.-4.8.2013).