Greetings from Oulu, Finland! My name is Jari Ruohomäki and I send this letter

to you because I was able to listen to your station´s program here in Finland

with my special equipment.

 

I am 44 years old, married and have a 17-year old daughter Anniina and a

14-year-old son Antti. I am a teacher of biology and geography for pupils from

13 to 16 years. My wife, Eija, is also a teacher and she teaches English which

all pupils from 9 to 16 study as a compulsory subject here in Finland.

Oulu is the 5th biggest city in Finland with more than 127 000 inhabitants. It

is situated just at the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia in the northern

part of Finland, more than 300 miles north of the southern coast and Helsinki,

the capital of Finland. Oulu is the center of culture, traffic, sports and

industry of northen Finland.

 

Since 1973 my main hobby has been listening to foreign radio stations. As you

may know this hobby is called dx-listening. Since the beginning of the 1980´s I

have concentrated on listening to North-American AM stations. The conditions for

listening are quite bad here in southern Finland. Therefore I go each winter

with a friend of mine to the most northern part of Finland called Lapland for a

listening expedition. We spend a week or two in an isolated cottage. The

conditions are much better there because of less interference from human

activities and from European AM stations. It is also possible to have longwire

antennas which are ideal for our listening purposes. For the expedition we

usually go to Lemmenjoki, some 200 miles north of the Arctic circle and 350

miles north of Oulu. It was right there I was able to hear your station, too.

 

But now I had better give the details concerning the reception. I was able to

hear your station as follows:

- FREQUENCY: 1310 khz

- DATE: 2md January 2004, 4th January 2005 and 5th January 2005

- TIME: 5.05 am (2nd Jan), 12.30 am (4th Jan)4.00 - 4.06 am (5th Jan)PST

To prove that I did hear your station, I enclose details of the program heard:

2nd January 2005

5.05 am ABC news was followed by the weather: "KNPT weather. Mostly cloudy this

afternoon with the chance of showers, high 30 … ".

4th January 2005

12.30 am I heard an announcement with important information where it was asked

to call Hampton Sanitary service office at Highway 20 .. at the southeast Marina

in Newport.

5th January 2005

4.00 am The legal station identification before ABC news: " … KNPT Newport".

4.06 am At this time I heard the following announcements: "News … on AM 13-10

KNPT … " and " … KNPT forecast. …partly cloudy over night .. around 35 …".

 

Thank you for your program! I wish I could have listened to it much longer, but

unfortunately it is very common that a far away AM station can be heard only a

short time before it fades out. To hear your station three times was really

surprising because I have not heard your station in previous years.

I suppose you are interested in my equipment. My receiver is a Japanese made JRC

NRD 535D communications receiver with an inbuilt digital frequency computer.

When I heard your station my antenna was a 3300-feet-long copper wire which was

directed to North-America, towards your area to be exact. In fact, I had five

different antennas in Lemmenjoki pointing to five different North-American

directions. It is very important to have a long antenna to a certain direction

when one tries to pick up overseas AM stations.

 

Thank you very much for reading this letter and your interest to my reception. I

would be very pleased if you had time to verify my reception of your station

KNPT by sending an answer to me. It would be very much appreciated in my

collection. Thank you!

 

Yours,

Jari Ruohomäki

Tykkykuja 6B

FIN-90630 OULU

FINLAND