Signal Lab

Operator Spotlight · TF1CB · Iceland

Under The Aurora: Working The World From An Icelandic Shore

Jakob Ingi Jakobsson, TF1CB, is an attorney in Iceland with a problem most operators never think about: his station sits directly beneath the auroral oval. When the aurora lights up, it does not just paint his sky — it eats his receive. And from that shoreline, with a 28 ft Greyline vertical he assembled himself, he worked Japan, Kuwait, and Indonesia on day one.

The 28-footer at TF1CB, flag down, facing the Nordic seas. A flagpole to any passerby. An antenna to the Pacific.

Day One, Fair Conditions

The conditions were nothing special. 20 meters was flat, and Jakob will tell you so himself. He called anyway, SSB — he is old school and says it with a grin — and Japan came back with S7 to S8 reports while JA stations ran 55 to 57 at his end. Then Kuwait. Then Indonesia. On a band he describes as fair at best.

When conditions run above average, he works Australia on 20 meter SSB — repeatedly, not as a fluke. From Iceland. He is waiting on one genuinely good propagation day to see what the 28 can really do, and so are we.

The Aurora Problem

Here is the teach, and it comes from Jakob, not from us. Operators further south rarely appreciate what the auroral zone does to an HF station that lives underneath it. Auroral absorption can crush reception even while your transmitted signal still gets out — stations hear Iceland fine on nights when Iceland can barely hear anyone. It is a one-way tax on the polar path, and every serious low-band text, John Devoldere ON4UN's "Low-Band DXing" among them, treats polar-path absorption as its own discipline. Jakob does not get to skip that class. His antenna has to buy back margin the geophysics takes away — which is exactly why aperture matters more at 64 degrees north than almost anywhere else.

28 Versus 24: Length Wins The Low Bands

Jakob ran a 24-footer before, so his comparison is measured, not guessed: the 28 gives him lower SWR and easier tuning from 10 through 80 meters, reasonable results on 160, and the improvement is most pronounced exactly where physics says it must be — 40 and 80 meters. Radiation resistance falls with the square of an antenna's length in wavelengths; that is Kraus, and it means every foot you add pays its biggest dividend on the band where the antenna is shortest. Four more feet is a rounding error on 10 meters and real money on 80.

The 28 in Icelandic sun. Flag down, as Jakob mostly runs it. A vertical, proudly.

A Feed System Built Like A Legal Argument

Jakob runs high power — and his feed system shows an attorney's habit of closing every loophole. Two chokes, two different jobs, deliberately separated: a balun at the ladder-line transition doing the balanced-to-50-ohm work, and a 5 kW 1:1 isolation choke immediately on the coax side doing nothing but killing common-mode current on the shield. Roy Lewallen, W7EL, drew that exact distinction in "Baluns: What They Do And How They Do It," and Jim Brown, K9YC, has the measured data on why the common-mode job deserves its own device. Jakob had RF crawling through his shack — equipment, rack, cables. This arrangement, plus ferrites where needed, ended it.

Beach, sky, and 28 feet of aluminum. Nothing else on the horizon needs to know.

The Winter Plan

Jakob thinks in seasons because Iceland makes him. He cannot guy the 28 with the whip on top at his site, and in Icelandic winter wind he judges that combination too much sail — so his repaired 24-footer stands ready as the storm-season antenna, and the whip experiment waits for spring. That is not caution, that is airmanship. The operator who plans his antenna year around his weather is the operator still on the air in February.

The shack, exactly as promised: a working room, not a magazine spread. FTDX3000, DU4000AL, OM4001A.

Track your own polar paths tonight — the auroral oval and live band conditions run on our DX Console, free to every operator. TF1CB glows gold on the club roster there, where he belongs.