February 8, 2011 e-mail:  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 (KKIN-AM Radio in Aitkin, Minnesota) 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,

February 9, 2011 e-mail:  My name is Arnstein Bue, I'm 47 years of age and I work as an Account Manager in a leading IT company in Norway.  I’ve been married to Heidi since 1989, and we have two sons (Mikael and Benjamin – 22 and 18 years old). Trondheim is the third biggest city in Norway, has a population of 173,000 and is situated in the middle of the country. Norway has a population of 4.9 million. Trondheim is an old city, celebrating its 1000-year-jubilee in 1997.

We have a big and quite famous cathedral here I town. It’s named Nidarosdomen, and you can find some information at www.nidarosdomen.no.

Since 1978 my favourite hobby has been to listen to remote radio stations on mediumwave and shortwave (DX-ing), a hobby which gives me a lot because I learn about other people and other countries. I collect the verification letters, cards or emails I receive from radio stations.

Every year since 1997 in October I have visited a small place named Kongsfjord (“Kings Bay”) in Arctic Norway. Kongsfjord is actually at a latitude just south of Barrow, Alaska, and it’s east of Istanbul, Turkey. I use to be there with three friends of mine, mainly to listen to AM radio stations from North America and the Pacific. More information can be found at our home page www.kongsfjord.no 

Minnesota is one of my favorite states!  That’s also because Minnesota is one of the most “Norwegian” states.  Receiving a confirmation of my reception really would make my day!