On the 2015 Christmas transmission, we received unusally many QSL reports, mostly from Europe but also some from the USA. One of them came from Laurence KL7L located in Wasilla (near Anchorage) Alaska, who sent us this report:

Hi Greetings from South Central Alaska  – Yes the path over the North Pole some 7000Kms or so can be very fickle and over the past years is quite variable dependent on season, geomagnetic conditions, time of day and local weather! But yes, I don’t think I’ve heard SAQ clearer as can be heard on the recording (listen to the recording here).

The signal is picked up with a high impedance “probe” up a tree here in the foot hills of the Talkeetna mountains – its placed for best signal to noise and after anti alias filtering comes into a sound card and displayed/filtered/noiseblanked by the Spectrumlab software and Audiocity audio program and converted to MP3.

We are highly influenced by Auroral activity on a day to day basis – see the attached photo of a recent Aurora lighting up two of the active receive probes – the larger one on the left is the one that received SAQ as is a design by Jay W1VD.

We have many receive and transmit antennas including large rotatable loops and verticals but the well placed probe typically performs the best for SAQ – some photos of these and where we live.

Ive been listening to SAQ for many years both here in Alaska but also in Oklahoma where I was filmed receiving SAQ  by a Japanese film crew making a documentary on SAQ a few years back

Other locations where Ive heard, moreover seen  SAQ include China on the shores of Bohai Bay – weak signals due to local noise but clear enough, Sabah Malaysia and Singapore.

Personally Im a retired radio officer and coast station operator and now employed by ConocoPhillips here in Alaska. I have a special interest in VLF LF and MF and hold experimental transmitting licenses in the 27-59kHz (!), 137kHz and 460-475kHz bands and also a licensed radio ham as G4DMA and here in Alaska as KL7L.

As ever its been a pleasure to hear SAQ once again and marvel how well the signal and ERP is received here in Alaska –

Best regards to all
Laurence