Arnstein Bue
Trondheim, Norway

 Hello Minnesota!  My name is OJ Sagdahl and I am a radio listener (DX-er) in Trondheim, Norway that collects radio stations. That is – I chase the AM-band for distant broadcast signals and contact the radio stations that I have heard with a so-called “reception report” to prove that I have heard them, and then ask if the station can confirm my reception.  This confirmation (QSL) is the ultimate proof of my reception and this is what I collect.  I have so far collected more than 1.000 US AM stations.  Some 49 were from the state of Minnesota.  Maybe I can add you as my #50?

I have the pleasure reporting reception of  KKIN 930 AM over here in northern Sweden! It was a big surprise to hear this clear station on October 31, 2010.  Reception quality was fair using a 3,000 foot wire pointed north from Parkalompolo, Sweden.  This was rare skip over to Europe!   I've been very actively scanning the AM for well over 40 years but never heard KKIN before!  AM radio is full of surprises!  Programming heard beginning at 12:59 AM Central Standard Time: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes song followed by station identification, "This is your home for America´s Best Music on your local News KKIN Aitkin."

I'm 58 years of age and work for InfoCare Service as on-site service engineer which mean a lot of car travel as it’s a large district to cover - the northern quarter of Sweden!   InfoCare Service is the largest independent third party field service organization in Scandinavia in electronics/ computer service representing Fujitsu, Dell, IBM, HP, Lexmark, NCR and others  and we also have to fix whatever breaks down at authorities, shops, banks etc.  Bo is an old Scandinavian male name.

We live in a small house on the coast of the Baltic Sea. The short, but very light (In June/July it’s daylight 24 hours a day!), summer focus is on outdoor activities.  The other of the year means means much more indoor activities. In March snow is usually one meter  (3 feet) deep.  Around Christmas time the sun is only just above the horizon for a couple of hours.  Up in the expedition site Parkalompolo the sun is never over the horizon for a little more than a week around December 20th.

From mid September until beginning of April I'm putting a lot of spare time into DX-ing, I.E. listening for North American AM signals from across the Atlantic and also writing the stations letting them know they made it across the sea or the north pole!  Often only for a few seconds and through some interference from European megawatt  transmitters or other US/Canadian stations with more radiated power to the northeast , but sometimes at very good signal under favorable geomagnetic conditions!  Catching a new station means listening to noise for weeks first! Since signals only travel in darkness most of my listening is made when normal people are at sleep!  Except in mid winter when it's dark in daytime.

Skellefteå is the home of about 75,000 people, half of which live in the city. Skellefteå is called "Gold Town" as we have both gold mines and the metal extraction industry here. Skellefteå also produce a large part of the country's clean electricity from the water falls.  30 km north of Skellefteå you find Byske. Byske has 3,000 inhabitants in the winter and more than twice as many in summer.  Many of them coming from Norway.  Besides sun and bathing Byske has a good salmon river.  Furuögrund, where I live, is 5 km east of Byske and it once had a big lumber mill and harbor, but of the then 1,200 living here now less than 80 are left.  Furuögrund is the canter of land elevation in Scandinavia, land rising about one centimetre per year.  What was the coast line a few decades ago is now far away from the water!   

Bo Olofsson, Sweden

At 6.13 a.m. Central Standard Time on the 12th of January 2010, I noticed adult standards music on 930 AM. There was an announcement at 6.16 a.m., but I think "KKIN", "contest" and "ATV" were mentioned. "It Never Rains in Southern California" was played at 6.21 a.m. At 6.34 the identification: "..home of America's best music.. 930 AM KKIN.." followed by "What a Wonderful World." At 6.43:"..great memories to America's best music, adult standards 930 AM KKIN." Tom Jones and "I'm Never Gonna Fall in Love Again" was around 6.48 hours, and still one faint identification at 7.00 a.m., but then the signal unfortunately disappeared.

My radio is a Perseus software receiver with about a 1000-yard-long antenna wire pointing towards central North America.  I don't have such a monster antenna at home, but I was on a radio excursion in northern Finland, in a place where we had enough space for such an antenna, and not much man-made noise around (some 45 miles from where Tuomo was at the same time.)

I am a 55-year-old teacher of English and Spanish in Joensuu, Finland. My wife Riitta is a teacher of German, and we have a 21-year-old son called Matti who studies information technology and a cat called Viiru (Stripes).  My hobbies include painting, playing tennis and this radio hobby of trying to catch distant radio signals.  My home town Joensuu with its 72,000 inhabitants was founded in 1848 at the beautiful mouth of the river Pielisjoki (Joensuu means "mouth of a river").  The whole region is dotted with hundreds and hundreds of lakes.  Weatherwise we have had a very strange year. Last winter was very cold, 90 consecutive days below the freezing point, and then in July and early August we lived like in the tropics. But now this winter we have been back under a cold spell again, with lots and lots of snow.

I wish you all the best in all of your daily activities. I would really appreciate receiving your short reception acknowledgement as a tangible memento of  these pleasant contacts via the airwaves.

Yours,
Jussi Suokas
JOENSUU, FINLAND

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 50 years old and have a 23-year old daughter Anniina who is an university student of logopedics and a 19-year-old son Antti. I am a teacher of biology and geography for pupils from 13 to 16 years.

Oulu is the 5th biggest city in Finland with more than 130 000 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 northern Finland.  Please check http://www.oulu.ouka.fi/ for more information of Oulu. Please note that you can change the language in to English from the left upper corner.

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 the region of Oulu. 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. Please check for a full story of the expedition: http://www.dxing.info/dxpeditions/lem287rep.dx

It was written by  Mika Mäkeläinen with whom I spent 10 days in Lapland.  But now I had better give the details concerning the reception. I was able to hear your station as follows:

- FREQUENCY: 930 AM
- DATE: 30TH December 2009
- TIME: 6.05 am CST

In the announcement I heard, a male announcer mentions your calls KKIN several time.  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.

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.  Yours,

Jari Ruohomäki
OULU, FINLAND 

Greetings from Sweden, I am a long-distance radio listener (DX-er). The reason why I write to you is that I believe I might have been able to pick up your station KKIN on 930 AM here in Sweden

I have a PhD in Microbiology. I work as a research engineer at the department of Oral Microbiology at Umeå University in northern Sweden. Umeå is approximately 650 kilometers north of Stockholm. I have a wife, Marie, and two daughters, Maja and Lina.  My favorite hobby for 25 years is listening to foreign radio stations on the AM and Shortwave bands (DX-ing).  I enjoy very much to listen for distant radio signals from USA and Canada. I here listened from Parkalompolo, a small village in the far north of Sweden (near the arctic circle).  I used Perseus software defined receiver and a 1000 meter wire antenna directed towards central USA/Canada. With this equipment I was happy to receive your station as follows:

DATE:  October 10, 2009
TIME:   8:00 pm Central Daylight Time (CDT) (=0100 GMT/UTC)
FREQUENCY:  930 kHz AM
PLACE:  Parkalompolo, Sweden

Picking up KKIN would be awesome for me, so if my observations are correct I would be very grateful if you could send me an email in return to verify that I in fact picked up KKIN 930 AM.

With many thanks in advance and the best to you, Sincerely Yours, Jan Oscarsson