QSL cards being printed

Hi everyone the QSL card design has been done and is being printed now by UX5UO. QSL cards from people are beginning to roll in and so I'll be able to start replying once the shipment of 5000 QSL arrives.

Friday August 23 – Home safe and sound........my thoughts need to now turn to the rare OC-255 Red Island DXpedition in October.

Well I’m now home in Middleton. The single engine plane ride from Flinders Island to Port Lincoln was a wild 60 minutes with zero visibility most of the way in thick cloud and torrential rain and of course the strong winds were entertaining. So now it’s a matter of unpacking all of the gear and then preparing to pack and freight gear up to Bamaga in far north Queensland for the Red Island OC-255 DXpedition in October – oh shit that’s only 8 weeks away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just sent the photo for the QSL card to UX5UO and so I should receive the QSL cards soon. I’ll post on the blog when the QSL cards arrive.

I’ve sent my log to Club Log and so if you click on the icon on the top right hand corner of this blog site you can check to confirm you’re in the log. If your callsign doesn’t appear then send me an email at vk5ce@yahoo.com.au

Thank you to everyone for you kind words of encouragement during the trip when the bands weren’t quite open and for spotting me when the bands were open but people just hadn’t found me yet. I appreciate everyone’s help.  Please monitor the Red Island blog site http://oc255.blogspot.com.au/ for updates.

Thank you also to those of you who have or are going to help with sponsorship. I can honestly say that every contribution helps to fund these adventures. My wife is happy for me to do 1 or 2 IOTA DXpeditions each year as long as I can figure out how to fund it!! There are a few islands that I’m doing my usual initial feasibility assessments. Of course my wife is 

Day 7 Wednesday August 21 – The marathon is almost over. I’m losing my voice, I’m cold and tired, there are headaches, backaches and tendonitis in my arm from using the PTT switch so much but I’m looking forward to some more pile ups

On the last full down of operation I noticed it was low tide down at the HF9V crime scene and so I salvaged the antenna and put it in a body bag and threw away the coaxial cable and radials. I jumped on 15m in the morning to try and get some JA’s in the log and at 0130 UTC after a few CQ calls I worked K0ZRK who said he’d spot me on the DX cluster. This resulted in a nice little 2 hour slow rate run on 15m but I still struggled to work JA’ and in this little cameo period I ended up having more contacts into USA than JA.

Even after 7 days of being at the same place at the same time on 20m the long path European QSO’s continued to role in with lots of QRP, mobile and Scandinavians making their way into the log today and by now I didn’t have worry about getting Europe to stand by for North America. The west coast guys were getting through on their own and a handful of Brazilian, Namibian and South African QSO’s today was a good indication that everyone who could be heard was getting a new IOTA. I decided to leave 20m even earlier than the previous day and venture to 15m at 0650 UTC to give me a solid hour and a half of daylight before sunset to work JA. I was delighted to hear from Shu JN6RZM and I was bracing myself finally for a JA run at the end of the DXpedition. But no it didn’t happen. Instead there was a pile up of 15m Europeans who were working me via the long-path. You know things are weird when I’m trying to pick out JA call signs over Europeans and then a long path Mexican XE1AJ is S9+ and breaks the pile up. You also know the 15m band is weird when another V51 station breaks a JA pile up on 15m.  Eventually some JA’s did get in the log until 0900 UTC when 15m closed.

I was hoping I could finish the DXpedition with a final run into North America on 20m. For the third night in a row at 1030 UTC there wasn’t a single station audible on 20m and if this had happened at home I’d simply switch off the radio and watch TV. So again with blind faith I started calling CQ and again the stations from the east coast of Canada and USA started coming in. The amazing thing is that unlike the first evening, for nights 2 to 7 there were no Asian or European signals present. The pile ups into North America were generally small and I was starting to think that my signal wasn’t very good and that only big guns could work me and that’s why there were small pile ups. But that theory went out the window as this evening and last night there were lots of generals with 100 watts, a number of stations very excited about working their first ever VK, lots of people driving on the way to work mobile and guys who I’d worked in previous nights calling me as QRP this time. Despite a little disappointment with the small pile ups into North America I was delighted to work 1000 stations and have 21% of the total log to this part of the world. For example on Bremer Island last year out of 5149 QSO’s there were 371 QSO’s (7% of the total) for North America compared to 3020 QSO’s (62% of the total) for Europe. But with this trip there is 4893 QSO’s with 1008 QSO’s (21% of the total) for North America compared to 3082 QSO’s (60% of the total) – so that’s a much better share.

Here’s the final statistics:

4893    Total QSO’s

3020 - 62% - Europe                          

1008 - 21% - North America  

  484 - 10% - Asia

  312 -   6% - Oceania

    52 -   1% - Africa

    16 - <1% - South America 

      1 - <1% - Antarctica 

4295 - 88% - 20M                              

  530 - 11% - 15M

    40 - <1% - 40M                              

    28 - <1% - 30M                              

4828 - 99% - SSB

    65 -    1% - PSK31

Day 6 Tuesday August 20 – slow rate on 20m, I don’t care though as the “little pistol” stations are getting their chance to work a new IOTA.

For those JA stations that didn’t get in the log I apologise but I was trying. Again there were hours of unproductive CQ calls in the morning as there were very few signals on 15m. The routine continued by visiting 20m for long path Europe but conditions were not as good on 20m with few callers in the 0330-0445 UTC period. With a bit of DX cluster help again from Ray VK4NH the rate increased. I decided to stick with 20m at this time of day to give those stations with modest antennas and power a chance. I would love to give the big guns 3 bands for the IOTA marathon but the focus was to give everyone the chance to get a new IOTA. So the rate was a lot a slower but more people should be happy. An analysis of the log earlier today revealed that the number of JA logs were very low. I was hoping they’d find me on 20m in the 1030 UTC onwards period when I start looking for North America but that only really occurred on the first day. 

As soon as the European pile up subsided at 0745 UTC I went to 15m and called CQ and I was getting ready for the JA onslaught as most people there would be home from work at that time of the late afternoon. I couldn’t believe that 30 minutes of CQ’ing only resulted in a VK8, two DU’s, two JA’s and V51GB. It was so unproductive that V51GB kept on calling every 5-10 minutes to say I was strong and he didn’t know where everyone else was!!!! This was going nowhere so I went back to my 20m frequency at 0815 UTC and after a couple of CQ’s a two hour pile up into Europe occurred. I tried Japan, sorry. As per usual I had a meal break and worked into North America for a couple of hours before the band closed quite early at 1230 UTC.

Day 5 Monday August 19 – 20m just keeps on delivering in the 0300 – 1400 UTC marathon period.

While calling CQ on 15m I experienced a microphone problem. I don’t have anything fancy like a Heil headset, it’s just the standard handheld microphone that came with the Icom IC-706MKIIG. On Bremer Island last year I had the problem of the button sticking on transmit and so I’ve since purchased a new one. Well after 4 days of calling CQ I must have worn the microphone out as the silver metal clip that compresses the microswitch when you press the push-to-talk button failed and broke. So now my microphone failure was that I’d press the PTT switch but it would not transmit. Fortunately I brought the original microphone with the sticking PTT button and so I spent my morning doing open heart surgery and interchanging parts and praying to the gods of the ionosphere for some divine intervention. My prayers were answered and it worked – phew.

The usual routine continued this day starting on 20m around 0330 UTC and working long path Europe and a little bit of short path North America until 0800 UTC when the band allowed all three major DX locations of Europe, North America and Asia to come through until 0930 UTC. I then took my meal break, commenced on 20m around 1000 UTC and began working east coast USA from New Foundland to Florida until 1400 UTC.

Day 4 Sunday August 18 – gale force wind warning finishes – able to put up 15m vertical dipole. 20m keeps producing endless pile-ups while the band is open.

The winds were still strong but I knew the 20m vertical dipole could survive the rest of the DXpedition. So in strong winds I erected the 15m vertical dipole. There was a slow and unspectacular run of JA stations on the Sunday morning from 2230 UTC-0230 UTC. I couldn’t understand this as it wasn’t a working day. As I mentioned previously, 15m in South Australia in August is..... now what’s the technical term?....... absolutely crap!!!!

Before starting the business end of the day on 20m I walked along the beach to check on the HF9V and the previous evening’s storm surge had confirmed my fears and now the antenna was a right off. I wasn’t too concerned because I was getting all of the European and North American QSO’s on 20m with big signals and long openings. The HF9V will go into surgery after I return home.

I started operating on 20m as per the regular routine but as it was a Sunday and there was so much QRM and the band was crazy being full of light house operators too. I had to work simplex as 14260 +/- 30kHz was bedlam. Despite this people were pretty well behaved and the rate was actually much faster than when I have been operating split over the previous few days. When you operate split, people just call and call non-stop. At least when I was operating simplex, people would give a burst of calls for 5 seconds and sort of listen. Mind you this wouldn’t have worked in the first couple of days of operating and whenever I got out of rhythm in the simplex pile-up, chaos broke loose and order had to be restored again. 

Day 3 Saturday August 17 – gale force winds and electrical storms – Houston we have a problem.

It was still WAY to windy to consider putting up the 15m vertical dipole and I was expecting the 20m vertical dipole’s fibreglass pole to de destroyed overnight but it somehow still survived. In the light of day there was lots of storm surge damage to the beach but the 20m vertical dipole guy anchors were hammered very deep into the beach despite the water crashing over two of the guy points – yikes!

In the morning I went on to 15m to work JA’s (Saturday morning their local time) and North America. South Australia is VERY VERY different to all of my other IOTA DXpedition ventures to the top end of the Northern Territory (VK8BI OC-185) and far north Queensland (VK4LDX/P OC-138/OC-171/OC-172). It’s even worse at this time of the year. Working JA’s on these other DXpeditions has been as easy a shooting fix in a barrel, but 15m during the day for a South Australian DXpedition in August was like pulling teeth. There was very little propagation and there was a slow trickle of JA and USA stations. Mind you FM5DN at 0030 UTC was 59+20dB and he couldn’t understand why I didn’t have a big pile up as he claimed my signal was massive in the Caribbean.  

A local VK contest was starting at 0300 UTC and going for 24 hours and so I ventured to 20m early at 0245 UTC to start calling CQ and hold my frequency. The first European signal occurred at 0254 UTC and it was another massive pile up from 0430 to 0800 and the band closed at 0930. I could only be on the air very intermittently after this time due to massive electrical storms that evening.

As the skies were lit up with lightning and the worst of the storm hit the island, I reflected on the fact that the Spiderbeam yagi which I’ve used for my past few IOTA DXpeditions would have been destroyed in the first day. From now on I’ll only ever use these wonderful vertical dipoles on the Spiderbeam poles at the high tide mark of the beach. Their performance is amazing and there are no beam headings to worry about. If I want to “beam” to North America then I just ask other parts of the world to stand-by!