DX Year in Review

With the number of new countries dwindling as I near the top of the DXCC there were even fewer new ones than last year but the lack of numbers didn't dampen the excitement of logging 11 all-time-new-ones in 2016. Several dxpeditions to top-ten most wanted entities were on the calendar and I didn't plan to miss any of them.

The year started with a nail biter. I was in KH6 for most of January and would be back just in time to work K5P from Palmyra Island. Any travel delays and I'd be hooped as they were scheduled to shut down the day after my return. Just for fun I worked them with my QRP portable setup in Hawaii and did make it home in time to work them on 20m SSB. As a bonus, I even managed to get them on 80m CW the next morning before they went QRT.




Following right on the heels of K5P was the top-ten-double-header of VP8STI and VP8SGI. It had been a long time since a dxpedition had visited South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia Islands. Conditions on South Sandwich (both weather and propagation) were not very good but I got in their log before they evacuated the island early due to the deteriorating weather. The situation on South Georgia was much better and from there I picked up several new bands and modes.





Ken LA7GIA and Nobu JA0JHQ are outstanding operators who have traveled to several rare entities in the past few years. In 2015 I worked Ken from Comoros Islands and Nobu from Cocos-Keeling Island. This year Ken's trip to Equatorial Guinea resulted in a new one for me and my last "Guinea" (there are four: Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Papua New Guinea) and I was also lucky to snag Nobu when he was in Bhutan as his working conditions there were not very good.

 The big one that everyone was waiting for was VK0EK, the once in 20-years opportunity to work Heard Island. Conditions to North America on the higher bands were poor and with the 400W output power limit imposed by the Australian regulations for many they were a tough one to work. Luckily for me they came up on 30m the first day right at our mutual greyline time and I was one of the first North American stations in their log.



Right on the heals of VK0EK was an operation by large team of French operators to another top-10 most wanted entity, Juan de Nova Island. Conditions were great for this one and they were loud everywhere which was a big relief after the somewhat sketchy signals from Heard Island.



After the string of blockbuster expeditions in the first quarter things slowed considerably. I was very busy the remainder of the year with other things although I did manage to put Spratly Islands, Saint Paul Island, and Temotu Province in the log for #312, 313, and 314.

 At the end of October the antennas all came down in anticipation of putting up the new tower. Unfortunately, several unexpected trips combined with deteriorating weather and dwindling daylight to stall that project until the New Year. I did see a few semi-rare new ones go by but I'm sure I'll have an opportunity to work them again soon (famous last words, right?).

73 and Good DX to everyone in the New Year!

 

Choke Artist

One of the challenges of operating from an 'urban' environment is the constant battle to reduce the received noise on the HF bands. Since a lot of that noise is conducted via common-mode signals, ie; on the outside of coax and control cables, part of my new antenna effort includes placement of RF chokes at critical locations to block the noise. As well, since the tower will be used as part of the 80m/30m sloper antenna system, chokes are required to keep the RF from running back into the shack on the outside of the cables.




The choke at the top of the picture is the feedpoint choke for the yagi, a 3-element Mosley S-33 17/20/40m. The other three go at the bottom of the tower. The one on the left is for the rotor control cable and the two on the right are for the antenna feedlines, one each for the yagi and the sloper. All the antenna chokes are made from 13 turns of RG-142 teflon coax wound through a double-stack of mix 43 ferrite rings and enclosed in a weatherproof PVC box. They should provide a high choking impedance right across the HF spectrum and be good for full legal power and a modest amount of SWR, although I probably wouldn't want to push them too hard at any non-resonant frequencies.

A good source of information on how to tackle RFI issues and keep the common-mode noise at bay is Chuck W1HIS. His paper on the subject is amazing and anyone building a station needs to give it a read. I had to think hard about what he wrote for a long time before I decided that he's not crazy, although his station does seem to employ a significant fraction of the world's ferrite production.. If you have read this far and it is still the weekend of the Sweepstakes contest you will have undoubtedly surmised by now that I will NOT be on the air for the contest. I had intended to get the new tower and antennas up in time for CQWW SSB at the end of October but here it is SS Phone weekend in November and I'm still QRT. Life has a way of messing up the best intentions and between a bout of the flu, a string of unexpected trips out of town for various reasons, and the ever decreasing amount of daylight available, things have just not come together as quickly as I had hoped. Nevertheless, I will continue to plug away and really do expect to be on the air again within a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Out With The Old

Once the weather starts to turn colder, the boat is put away for the season, and all the firewood is split and stacked, I always plan to spend the last couple of weeks before winter working on the station antennas. This year the main project is the new tower and the "new" (I bought it SIX years ago!) yagi. More on that in a future post but the first order of business was taking down the old tower and antennas. They will be raised in a new location next year but for now I just needed to get them out of the way as the new tower is going in that spot. I procured the use of a lift with a 60-foot boom and in a few hours the antennas were off and the old tower was dismantled. 





The assembly of the new tower (a Titan T400-80) is well underway but weather and work travel have slowed progress considerably. I wanted to have it all up in time for the CQ WW contest at the end of October but now I'm just hoping its ready in time for Sweepstakes Phone in November!

ARRLDX SSB VE8EV SOSB/20 HP

                    ARRL DX Contest, SSB

Call: VE8EV
Operator(s): VE8EV
Station: VE8EV

Class: SOSB/20 HP
QTH: Inuvik, NT
Operating Time (hrs): 34

Summary:
Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:          
   80:          
   40:          
   20: 1393   105
   15:          
   10:          
-------------------
Total: 1393   105  Total Score = 433,440

Club:

Comments:

The forecast said that it was coming and, oh boy, did it ever hit me hard!  Sunday its usually difficult enough to find new guys to work when you're doing SOSB but from up here, with the K-index at 7, it's excruciating!  I CQ'd endlessly in every direction and regularly S&P'd the band but to no avail.  The last four hours had only two dozen Q's and a third of those were dupes and VE's.

The band was mostly ok on Friday and Saturday before the aurora hit and I'm glad I took the opportunity to make hay while the sun shined.  As always in this contest there were lots of zero-pointers and an astounding number of dupes but it was still lots of fun.  The station is really starting to come together now and next contest season is going to be even better!

73
John VE8EV

NAQP CW VE8EV/KH6 Single Op QRP

Call: VE8EV/KH6
Operator(s): VE8EV
Station: VE8EV/KH6

Class: Single Op QRP
QTH: Maui
Operating Time (hrs): 6

Summary:
Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:          
   80:   1      1
   40:   8      6
   20:  11      7
   15:   8      5
   10:   1      1
-------------------
Total:  29     20  Total Score = 580

Team:

Comments:

First time ever QRP but I'm an expert at operating from the middle of nowhere when no one can hear you calling.  All the bands were open at one time or another and I S&P'd my way around, just happy to be here.  Most stations I called eventually did pull me through although I felt a bit bad for them all as "VE8EV/KH6" is a bit of a mind-bender and especially so at QRP strength.  I managed to work both coasts but didn't hear any VEs.
73
John VE8EV
105ft dipole up 30ft in the trees, Flex 1500

DX Year in Review

About this time last year I wrote about how much fun I was having chasing DX. Between the new station and the good band conditions I was working DX like crazy and loving every minute of it. In 2015 the pace slowed way down. Not so much because of conditions either but mostly because there were just fewer new ones to work! I was also busy on a lot of other projects this year so had less time to spend on the radio. That said, I still had lots of fun chasing DX this year and there weren’t many "ATNOs" (all-time-new-ones) on the air that I missed. Here are some of the highlights:


1A0C Sovereign Military Order of Malta
Actually located in Italy but qualifying as a separate "entity", a fairly large expedition-style operation popped up from there without warning at the end of last December. I had my shack all torn apart for a major reconfiguration and was even using it as a guest room over the Christmas holiday. As soon as I could reclaim my shack I quickly cobbled a few things together and was able to make a quick contact on 20 meters SSB before their operation finished.

K1N Navassa Island
This was the big one. A once in 30 years opportunity to work Navassa and the big-name dxpedition operators did not disappoint. Everyone needed this one and band conditions cooperated for me to get them into the log on several different bands and modes.

PY0T Trindade and Martin Vaz Islands and
TI9/3Z9DX Cocos Island

These were both small, limited time DXpeditions to very rare South American islands and I happened to be in the right place at the right time to work them both. Many others were not so lucky.

3B7FA St. Brandon Island

I wasn’t expecting to work this one at all. It was a short, one-man expedition to a tiny island in the South Indian Ocean. He was only using low power and a small antenna and preferred to use a certain digital mode (PSK63) that does not do well coming over the pole through the aurora. Luckily for me, however, he just happened to be on the air one morning when we had a perfect grey line path right during my usual "radio time" first thing in the morning before work.

VK9WA Willis Island

Not a super rare entity but a new one for me, this South Pacific island near Australia was put on the air by an international team of operators in November. I was pretty sure I’d be able to work them and was even hoping to get a contact on 80m to put me one step closer to the nearly-impossible-from-the-Arctic "5-Band-DXCC" award. Well, as it happened, the operators were excellent, conditions were superb, and I worked the heck out of these guys. I even made that contact on 80m :)

J52HF Guinea-Bissau

I heard that IZ3BUR Livio would be operating from the Cumura Mission Hospital during his spare time for a few weeks in late November/early December. His "spare time" was usually in his midday which was the middle of the night here. Shortly after he started operating I got up in the middle of the night to have a listen. He was on 20 meters SSB and I could hear him ok but by the time I had the amp warmed up and ready to go he had gone off the air. I tried again the next night but this time he was on 15 meters and I couldn’t hear him at all. And the same thing the next night. And the next night. A couple of times he popped up on 20 meters in our early morning after I had already gone to work but most every day (night!) it was the same thing, only active working Europe on the higher bands that I could not hear over the pole. After three weeks of sleep deprivation I had resigned myself to the fact that I just wasn’t going to be able to work him. I was leaving town for 4 days and he was heading back to Italy while I was gone. The day I was traveling I had taken the whole day off work and, wouldn’t you know it, that morning he popped up on 20 meters just as I was getting ready to shut off the rig and start packing!



2016 is going to be a great year for DXing. Most of the top-ten most-wanted entities will be on the air but we're also starting the long slide towards solar minimum. I just hope I’ll be able to hear them...

Seasons Greetings and Good DX in the New Year!