Hi everyone after a very tiring, hot, humid and demanding DXpedition in the tropics I am back on the mainland. Due to bad weather we were delayed on Wednesday the 18th and landed late in the day and so there was no time to put up the Spiderbeam yagi for 10m-15m-17m-20m. The weather was bad but I was able to quickly string up the 12m Spiderbeam fibreglass pole next to my hut and put the 24 MHz vertical dipole up before it got dark and worked 200 stations before 12m closed. So instead of 6 it was only a 5 day operation and so I'm pleased with the 5149 QSOs with a single person effort. Much more than my previous highest DXpedition QSO total of 3925 QSOs as VK4LDX/P on Horn Island OC-138 done last year.
I'll do a day by day write up on the blog over the next week or so.
This afternoon now that I'm back on the mainland I've noticed people sending emails to me during the DXpedition but please understand I had no internet access on the island that would enable me to look at emails. On a few occasions during the day I would walk up a big sand dune in the oppressive heat and humidity of the tropics and get 'one bar'of mobile phone reception to send a spot on the cluster but the phone reception was sporadic and unreliable at best, I wasn't even able to SMS my wife to say I had arrived safely on the island until the second day. Today on the phone she said she knew I was OK as I showed her how to monitor VK8BI on the DX cluster - hi hi! So for those who were emailing me, please understand that Bremer Island is remote with no electricity or mobile phone coverage, it's barely on the fringe of the mainland network.
Conditions were spectacular to Europe in the evening but I spent lots of time looking for North America with only moderate success. On four evenings I left and QSY'd in the middle on monster pile ups to Europe on 15m or 17m (I'm sure much to their disappointment and annoyance) and went to 20m calling CQ to North America only without much luck, it was good on only 2 out of four evenings and only lasted 60-90 minutes (I'm sure much to their disappointment and annoyance). I was beaming to North America on 15m in the 2300-0100 UTC period and calling CQ with only a small number of QSOs to North America. So I was trying for North America during the likely times/bands but that's just conditions unfortunately. Anyway as I said I'll do a day by day account my adventure on the blog site soon including my highs, lows, successes, failures and so forth of each day.
73's de Craig VK8BI ................need sleep...........................
Hi Craig.
ReplyDeleteIt has been very nice to work you both on 15 & 10m, conditions were amazing. Do you expect to use OQRS or something like that for QSL Requesting !
By the way, you managed very well every pileup I've been able to hear. Congrats (and you should now go to apply for the ZL9 trip in december with your skills ;))
73's de F5UKW