January 2016

Today, Jan 6th, I worked FT4XU Nicholas, a very French scientist on Kerguelen Island, the closest speck of land to Heard Island. He was working EU stations steadily at about 2/minute, using a barefoot radio and low dipole on 20m SSB. His signal came short-path via Antarctica with the characteristic flutter, S5 at about 18:00z, dropping down close to the noise floor at 18:30z and back up to about S3 when I finally caught him at 19:00z. An hour’s toil bagged me DXCC #325 all-time and #323 current.  :-)  The Cordell group heading for VK0EK Heard Island in March/April originally hoped to call in at Kerguelen en route but changed boats and plans.

K5P on Palmyra atoll was all over the bands this month and very easy to work from here, being “local”, a mere 5,500 km NNE across the Pacific.  Despite the moans from Europe, they were definitely making the effort to work EU, stopping their high-rate NA and JA pilesup when they hear/work an EU stn to call CQ EU ONLY.  Their QSO rate then plummeted, whether or not the path to EU was truly open ...  Anyway, just for fun I decided to take the opportunity to catch them on 160m right at the end of their trip, which entailed putting up a temporary antenna for their final evening on-air.  It took me an hour to get a line 20m up a handy fir tree near the shack, and another half hour to lash up an inverted-vee dipole with a homebrew balun box marked “Dodgy” and a very sad-looking mangled chunk of RG58 coax.  The high SWR was a little clue that something was seriously wrong but by then it was dark.  Right on cue, K5P appeared on 1921.5.  I made several calls, gingerly running a few hundred watts in the hope that my ATU wouldn’t release the smoke, until, finally, bingo!  Thanks K5P and lash-up antenna, job done.  The knackered feeder will shortly be consigned to the waste bin and I really must check out that balun.  It’s about time I put up a proper, permanent topband antenna.

Compared to K5P, VP8STI on South Sandwich was a tough one, although I was lucky enough to nab them on 17/CW via the S Pole at 17:50z shortly after ZL dawn on their first day, and shortly after on 15/CW also.  I hope they don’t mind that I called them when they put (some of) the EU mob on hold to call Asia. That's DXCC #327/325 in the bag.  Catching them on 40/CW was a bonus.  An auroral alert 12 hours earlier implied poor HF conditions and I wondered if LF conditions would be good.  Sure enough, VP8STI was  cracking along on 40m towards our sunset and dinner time ... so it was chicken salad al desko for me, headphones on.  I may have made the memory buttons greasy but it was well worth it!  A few more ZL DXers made it though after me, thanks largely to a good path and the excellent ops at both ends.

2016 is a good year for DX already, and it’s still only January with Heard and Europa still to come!