On October 28 of last year, Hannu Niilekselä sat inside a wooden cottage in northern Finland, a small radio by his side.  

A radio enthusiast, Niilekselä was in the midst of his annual trip to Love River – a remote village of 20 people yet 5000 reindeer – where he and others like him meet to bask in the perfect weather conditions for receiving signals from American stations.  

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Using 3,000-foot long wire antennas directed toward North America, Niilekselä is able to receive and record AM signals from thousand of miles away.  

According to Niilekselä, the darkness in the village, which lies 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, is optimal for long distance reception during late autumn through the middle of winter.  

Late at night, radio waves bounce around the ionosphere, a section of the atmosphere that begins at an altitude of about 30 miles. In this zone, atoms ionized by radiation from the sun reflect, making communication possible over long distances.  

At approximately 12:05 Eastern Standard Summer Time (Finland in 10 hours ahead of Santa Clarita) Niilekselä sat at his desk strewn with various gadgets.  

Catching him off guard, the R.E.M. song “Losing My Religion” seeped through his headphones with surprising clarity.  

Here’s a clip of what Hannu heard. Press play on the player below:

{enclose hannu-clip.mp3}

However, upon the first listen, he was not able to make out the station identification as the signal weakened.  

The second time, he listened closer, and could hear a muddled string of words: “AM-1220 KHTS. Your hometown station.”  

Niilekselä was elated, achieving what he calls “the almost impossible.”  

Technically speaking, KHTS broadcasts at 1000 watts, with its signal from Santa Clarita reaching a circumference of 50 miles.  

The distance between Santa Clarita to Niilekselä’s location in Finland where he picked up the signal is a little more than 5,000 miles.  

“The almost impossible” indeed.  

A CPA by trade, the Helsinki native said his love of radio began as a young boy. At age 14, he realized that from the AM band he could pick up many foreign stations by connecting a few feet of wire into the antenna socket.  

“In those times we only had our national Finnish Broadcasting Company, which really did not play a lot of music for teenagers,” Niilekselä, now 58, said in an e-mail.  

Fascinated by the science involved, Niilekselä joined a club for radio enthusiasts.  

In 1969, he acquired a professional antenna and heard his first radio station from North America – a Canadian station from Newfoundland.  

Beginning in 1984, Niilekselä found the destination where he and his hobby could be most at one with each other: the small Finnish village of Love River.  

“One of the absolutely important factors is darkness,” he said. “The skip for AM signals only takes place when the path from the signal is dark.  

Later in the autumn, the northern areas are substantially more in the darkness. In mid-winter the sun actually does not rise at all, giving excellent over-the-pole reception conditions most of the day (in Finland).”  

For more than 40 years, Niilekselä has experimented with radio signals, equipment and technology. He was reminded on that October afternoon why he’s done this for so long.  

“It’s a bit like having all the Lotto numbers correct at the same time.”