Easter Island: the apotheoses

It is a week ago that we left Easter Island with the XR0Y expedition.
In Santiago de Chili the group splitted, Stan went to the South with his sister to travel there (very nice!), Leszek back to Boston and the rest to Europe. Marco already had left a week earlier, back to work.

In Santiago we did a short tour in the city, did some nice shopping on Lapislázuli and had a great  ’say goodbye’ dinner at the home of Pedro (CE3BFZ-CE3FZ) and Ximena. The Radio Club de Chile RCCh was very very helpfull in organizing this expedition, especially Pedro and his wife who did a full taxi-service for us to-and-fro the airport in Santiago. Thanks!!

Aart PA3C handing over the radio to Pedro CE3FZ

When I decided to go on this trip I also decided to donate my old radio FT767GX to the RCCh. I hope that the club can stimulate the young people for our hobby with this radio, our group is getting older and more grey hair every year and the influx of new (young) people is very thin. Internet and other hobbies take a lot of time!

I worked a lot of stations while on Easter Island but was still missing the DXCC from my home location. And just one week after returning Lars, SM6CUK is on Easter Island and I managed to work him on 40m/17m/20m cw for a new DXCC (292). Nice apotheoses of the Easter Island expedition!

XR0Y expedition

Tomorrow I will leave for Chili > Easter Island.
The expedition will be ‘holiday-style’ so there will be also time to visit the Island (do they rent bicycles there?).
Also I want to do some diving, water temp 22C is fresh but visibility seems to be very good (50m??!!!)

I will not blog here about the expedition. There is a perfect site maintained by Stan, with videoblogs, logs and so on.

XRoY website. And also on twitter.

Hope to meet you (I will be mainly on SSB)

I didn’t know this: 1st place in contest!

CQWW 2009 SSB

Just back from an assignment from India. When I came home I found out that the 160m inverted-L was destroyed by the cows from the neighbor.  Not sure how they did it. The top-line was across their land but to high for the ladies. Maybe the wind was so heavy (I was not at home, don’t know) that the flex-pole from 16 m was bended so much that the top-line fell to the ground.
Yesterday the farmer brought 40m alu wire back to me.
So no 160/80m for me so I decided to focus on 40m and have some fun on the other bands, mainly 15m&10m.

Saturday 15m&10m were open, but not to the North-West. Later Saturday there was aurora on 2m declared, which explains all.
Sunday only 15m was open, 10m only short skip time-to-time.

I made nearly 600 qso’s on 20 active hours (had to play volleyball on Saturday), quite nice with some nice Zones worked on 40m.
Missed Zones like 3/6/19 even on 15m!

Preparing for the trip now to Easter Island. You can follow all the details on the site. Already there are 4 videoblogs running!

New expeditions, new DXCC’s

Wintertime is coming and that’s the time that most expeditions take place.

PG5M Gerben started off in Western Kiribati and Tuvalu. I managed to work him on both Island, on 20m CW. Heard him on a few other bands (30m/15m) but the pile-up was like a wall…

Around the same time FT5GA started on Glorioso Island. I managed to work them on a few bands (12-12-17-20) but not on the lower frequencies. I must say that the jamming by lids is enormous, I never experienced that in my life yet.

After that I worked FO/SP9CYY (French Polynesia) on his way to Austral Island, where I worked him as TX5SPA on 30m.  2 new ones.
And today 3D20CR, Conway reef on 20m SSB.

Altogether not band for 3 weeks DX’ing. In the low bands (40m-160m) results are zero: the 40m beam is to low and my 80/160m vertical has failed up to now.

Experimenting with a 160/80 vertical

Last month I erected a combined vertical for 80/160. On a Spiderbeam-pole (18m) I had made a inv-L for 80m (1/4 lambda, 18m vertical, 22m horizontal slope for 160m), the wire is inside. For 80m the wire was taped on the outside, the last 2m sloping in 45 degrees. Feedpoint was the same (one coax from TX to pole.)

SWR was >>> on both 160 and 80m. So I asked Thomas PA2M to help me with his SWR-measuring tool and after a lot of testing it was clear: this will never work. The interaction between the 2 vertical wires is so big that 80m will never dip in the 3,5 MHz band(best dip was somewhere 5,5 MHz???).

160 m dipps inside the band, bit to high but that is easy to repair. SWR is about 1:3, theory points out that 1:1,5 is the best SWR you can get (with horizontal topline, which is not the case). Measured R is about 25 ohm, so maybe a 1:2 transformation is necessary.

So that made it clear that a brilliant idea failed on trying out. For 80m I have to invent something different.

NEC-diagram 160m Inv-L

Spiderbeam 18m

detail groundplate & 160/80 injection

More detail. 160m wire going inside and 80m wire on the outside

She loves it

Easter Island website launched: XR0YA

The website for the expedition to Easter Island in November has been launched. 

XR0YA website

We have also been granted license for 30m CW with this call,
which will attrack huge pile-ups I’m sure!
We will be very active on 30m see our goals.

Preparations are running and we still need support see the XR0YA-website.

Read all about Easter Island on wikipedia (many languages).

See you on the band!

pre-amp on 6m

Just after the Es-season (too late…) I finished a preamp for 6m.  Thanks to Colin GM0RLZ who sold me all necessary items (PCB, SMD and pre-wound coils) for a good price. The preamp design is from YU1AW details here.

Putting it all together was not difficult but I it was a long time ago (years) I was soldering myself. The eyesight has not improved, shaking hands and SMD’s are really small things! But after concentrating and using a tweezer from my wife I got it all on the PCB.

Some calibration has to be done, but I just turned the C’s around and listened for maximum noise.
No other adjustments.

On a 5 ele antenne for 6m, 1 meter high, screened by some bush, I can hear LX0SIX (363 km) almost as good as on the (6 ele) SteppIR on 10m high. Not bad at all!

This weekend I will perform a real comparison test but now so many T-storms I have to disconnect.

qsl TN5SN on 6m received

I worked TN5SN 2 times on 6m on one day: CW and SSB. Especially in June the conditions to the South were very good and Nicolas was worked in Europe nearly every day. He already sent qsl via LOTW but always nice to have a card (and also necessary for some awards as LOTW is not available for card-checkers).

Also received qsl from A7/M0FGA and 5N0OCH via the LOTW-system, cards are pending (I hope).

Conditions are much less in Juli than in June.  Some hams were lucky with 5J but no other DX the last few days. Today I worked 3*K but with the big guns, it is better to say: they worked me

In the meantime we are preparing the trip to Easter Island in November, the group is now 6 and we have a lot of cooperation from the Chili Radioclub (RCCh). Within a few weeks there will be a website with more info so stay tuned!

FM5AA Martinique for a new one on 6m

I worked Frantz 2 times, on CW and on SSB.

A good opening on 6m again but not many new ones. No 5J0BV, no CO. Where are they?

qsl Montserrat on 6m

Received qsl for my QSO with Montserrat on 6m on June 20th direct. Thanks John!

Yesterday I worked ZC4 and OD5 within 5 minutes. The path was open and very small so not many qrm. I was so astonished by the signals that I forgot to start the tape (not the first time). But 2 DXCC in 5 minutes outside F2-period is not a daily happening. Big smile.

Now 96 DXCC on 6m only started with serious DX-ing on 6m in 2007.

We need more sunspots!!!