Good news this month: not only have I received my P5/3Z9DX QSL card from Dom but the ARRL will now accept it for the DXCC award. Checking took a wee while but it appears there was no evidence behind the objections raised. Seems to me they were scurrilous and baseless rumours, rotten eggs chucked by a jealous competitor of Dom's in the exotic travel business.
I scored a disappointing 3,000 points in BERU (the RSGB Commonwealth Contest) due largely to being on a family trip during the day and chasing 3C7A by evening. Condx were good to the UK on HF on the Sunday evening and I am grateful for the semi-exotic British Commonwealth QSOs to add to my 2016 Challenge totals: J79, 5X, VP9, 9M2, GU, 4S, VU and others.
I couldn’t resist chasing the 3C for an ATNO during the contest, despite weak SP signals and a huge pile of callers. He called CQ VK a few times - never CQ ZL as such but along with ZL1BYZ we took our chances anyway. ZS1C spotted him on the cluster with some helpful comments about hearing me so I guess my signal was reasonably strong in Africa, if only 3C7A wasn’t located on the wrong side of a mountain. LP signals have been weak to nonexistent so far. A couple of days later, Ken was kind enough to break away from an EU pileup on 20m to try for VK/ZL on 15m ... and we made it. Signals were weak on the short path via Antarctica and nil long path over Alaska. He confirmed on LoTW shortly after the trip - what a star!
That’s DXCC 325 with 324 confirmed (current). Assuming my FT4 QSO is confirmed, I still need 6 more confirmed DXCCs to hit Honor Roll, or 15 more to have 'worked the world'.
I couldn’t resist chasing the 3C for an ATNO during the contest, despite weak SP signals and a huge pile of callers. He called CQ VK a few times - never CQ ZL as such but along with ZL1BYZ we took our chances anyway. ZS1C spotted him on the cluster with some helpful comments about hearing me so I guess my signal was reasonably strong in Africa, if only 3C7A wasn’t located on the wrong side of a mountain. LP signals have been weak to nonexistent so far. A couple of days later, Ken was kind enough to break away from an EU pileup on 20m to try for VK/ZL on 15m ... and we made it. Signals were weak on the short path via Antarctica and nil long path over Alaska. He confirmed on LoTW shortly after the trip - what a star!
That’s DXCC 325 with 324 confirmed (current). Assuming my FT4 QSO is confirmed, I still need 6 more confirmed DXCCs to hit Honor Roll, or 15 more to have 'worked the world'.
VK0EK came on the air today (March 23) from Heard Island. Sounds like the crew had a good voyage and excellent weather for their arrival on that forbidding antarctic island. I couldn’t hear them on 40 or 30m but I arrived in the shack well after dawn and their first operating location is on the wrong side of the mountain for us (yes, that is a recurring theme, all part of the fun of DXing from ZL). Their real-time logging system is sort-of working with some teething troubles: amazing that it works at all from such a remote spot.
Late afternoon on the 24th, I think I made my first ever Heard Island QSO on 30m. Their signal was weak and warbly but I'm pretty sure I heard them send my call twice and the default 5NN report. The real-time logging appears to have packed up at the moment so now I'm waiting anxiously to find out whether I'm in the log and DXCC 326 is in the bag ... and sure enough once DXA3.org updated it looked like it's a good un:
Mmm, well maybe. The 30m blob mysteriously disappeared for a while! There are some features of DXA that I appreciate but inconsistent and unreliable info about completed QSOs is unhelpful. As with previous attempts at real-time logging from remote DX, DXA is somewhat unreliable. I presume a dodgy satellite Internet connection is the main issue, plus ‘teething troubles’ (bugs) in the DXA system.
Despite my complaints, the real-time news updates from the team at VK0EK are quite nice. I guess they could be using the DXcluster network also to pass out little messages about their situation, via self-spot comments or announcements, or their own website/blog/Twitter/whatever. I wouldn’t miss the rest of DXA though, and I hope it’s not diverting anyone there from assembling and operating the radio station. Nice try but more work required, methinks, before the next DXA outing.
Meanwhile, VK0EK are also uploading the log to Clublog where there was a separate problem:
I expected to see "New" in all those red squares since I've never had a Heard Island QSO before VK0EK. It looks like the blob-filler utility is interpreting VK0EK as Antarctica, not Heard Island. [This has since been fixed.]
Late afternoon on the 24th, I think I made my first ever Heard Island QSO on 30m. Their signal was weak and warbly but I'm pretty sure I heard them send my call twice and the default 5NN report. The real-time logging appears to have packed up at the moment so now I'm waiting anxiously to find out whether I'm in the log and DXCC 326 is in the bag ... and sure enough once DXA3.org updated it looked like it's a good un:
Mmm, well maybe. The 30m blob mysteriously disappeared for a while! There are some features of DXA that I appreciate but inconsistent and unreliable info about completed QSOs is unhelpful. As with previous attempts at real-time logging from remote DX, DXA is somewhat unreliable. I presume a dodgy satellite Internet connection is the main issue, plus ‘teething troubles’ (bugs) in the DXA system.
Meanwhile, VK0EK are also uploading the log to Clublog where there was a separate problem:
I expected to see "New" in all those red squares since I've never had a Heard Island QSO before VK0EK. It looks like the blob-filler utility is interpreting VK0EK as Antarctica, not Heard Island. [This has since been fixed.]
None of my VK0EK QSOs are in LoTW as yet, despite other early donors saying
they have got LoTW confirmations already, so I don’t know what’s going on there
either. Maybe my donation wasn't early enough? Not to worry, I'm sure it will all sort itself out in the end.
Right at the end of the month, FT4JA appeared on the air from Juan de Nova Island, a French military base between Madagascar and mainland Africa. In contrast to VK0EK, they have been very active already on several bands. I spent the morning listening and occasionally calling them LP on 15m but couldn't quite broach the enormous US wall. With relatively weak signals from FT4JA, the usual assortment of VFO-challenged callers, IQ-zeros, frequency kops, tuners and lids didn't help matters ... but hey it's all part of the fun/challenge of DXing these days. I'm quietly confident that we'll hook up before they head home to France. Keep up with developments in next month's blogging ...
Right at the end of the month, FT4JA appeared on the air from Juan de Nova Island, a French military base between Madagascar and mainland Africa. In contrast to VK0EK, they have been very active already on several bands. I spent the morning listening and occasionally calling them LP on 15m but couldn't quite broach the enormous US wall. With relatively weak signals from FT4JA, the usual assortment of VFO-challenged callers, IQ-zeros, frequency kops, tuners and lids didn't help matters ... but hey it's all part of the fun/challenge of DXing these days. I'm quietly confident that we'll hook up before they head home to France. Keep up with developments in next month's blogging ...
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