Third Time's the Charm!

The uninhabited island of Bouvet in the far south Atlantic Ocean holds a special place in my heart.  As I've blogged over the past few years, Bouvet (like Burundi), has been a bit of a frustration.  One of only a handful of DXCC entities that I still need for my DXCC Honor Roll award, the remote Norwegian territory of Bouvetøya is extremely remote, difficult to access, and almost exactly on the other side of the world from me.  An attempt to mount a large DXpedition with a ship and helicopters in 2018 was a bust when the ship had engine problems and had to leave before the team was able to land on the island.  The fact that I would have missed it anyway due to my winter vacation was actually some comfort but the end result was the same: no 3Y0/B in the log.

This place is far, far away from anywhere, especially me!!

5 years later, in 2023, another group had a go.  This time they were going to get ashore on a tiny beach with rubber boats.  That one was also a flop as the beach was too rough to land all the heavy equipment.  They did manage to string up some marginal antennas and make a few contacts but despite my best efforts I never heard them at all from up here.

Undeterred, the same team (led by Ken LA7GIA and Adrian KO8SCA, Cezar VE3LYC, and Dennis KT8X) regrouped for another attempt planned for February 2026.  The operation cost an eye-watering $1.675 million USD, all raised by donations from the operators, ham radio clubs and institutions, individual hams around the world like me, and even a few tourists who came along just for the adventure!  Also this time they were bringing a helicopter to get onto the island which greatly increased the chance of success.

The 3Y0K expedition was planned to travel from South Africa by ship, land on the island by helicopter, and establish two camps at Cape Fie on the southeastern edge of the island (in the end they only set up one large camp). With generators, high-power amplifiers, and gain antennas, they would run multiple stations around the clock to offer this top ten most wanted DXCC entity to all the deserving DXers around the world, hopefully including me!

Like most years, I had a vacation planned for the whole month of February. Eager to avoid another near-miss like in 2018, I tracked their preparations carefully and made plans to repair my (again) broken antenna rotator and install whatever automation was required to operate my station remotely if necessary. Remote operation over the internet would have only required some screen sharing software and a couple of relays to switch the main DC and the 240V AC for the amplifier.  Repairing the rotator turned out to be the difficult part.  To fix the rotator would require getting practically up to the top of the tower to repair what I hoped was just a broken wire. Worst case I would just loosen the mast clamps and manually turn the antenna towards Bouvet!  January was a very busy month this year and much colder than average. When we had a short "warm spell" (a couple of days around -12C) I decided that I had to do it. I've only ever climbed my 80-foot tower twice before. Halfway up in 2017 to disconnect the crane when it was first erected and almost to the top in 2022 to fix the same problem as now, an issue with the remote rotator capacitor. Despite my previous career in the early 00's which involved lots of rigging and tower work, the older I got the less I cared to be dangling in the air off of a radio tower.  I've never had a fear of falling off, only of the tower deciding to fall down while I was attached to it!

Nevertheless, I brought my fall arrest gear home from work one afternoon, gathered my parts and wrenches, and started up the "big stick". Halfway up I stopped to catch my breath. Looking down, 40 feet is a long way to the ground. I looked up at the rotator, still 30 feet away. Big mistake! My resolve evaporated in an instant and I reversed course and climbed back down. In that moment it just was not happening. I don't like asking for favours but I knew someone with a Genie lift big enough to get me up to where I needed to be. A couple of days after my tower climbing fail I went to see my former (20 years ago!) employer. Once the small talk was out of the way I gently inquired about his lift. Turns out it had eaten a pump and was firmly out of commission with metal filings all through the hydraulics. Now what?

With life still going full throttle prior to our February trip, I was keeping tabs on the 3Y0K team.  I reached out to 3Y0K co-leader Cezar VE3LYC and while there were no guarantees, he estimated they would be finishing the operation a day or two before I got home.  Near the end of January, though, I found out about their ship.  By that time they were supposed to be on the island in only two weeks.  Their ship, however, had just completed some major repair work and was still dockside in the Canary Islands.  Some quick math told me their original schedule was now rubbish and, barring some kind of calamity, I was almost certain to catch at least the tail end of the operation when I returned home at the beginning of March.  I tried to push the thoughts of Bouvet out of my mind and headed off for some sun and fun in the tropics.

I didn't have much luck with not thinking about Bouvet and I followed the operation from poolside and airport lounges as I tracked the ship slowly making its way to Cape Town to pick up the team and then heading off into the south Atlantic. By the time I got back home they had only just arrived at the island and set up the camp. I was lucky with the timing but I still had to fix my antenna rotator. With the signals from 3Y0K already filling the airwaves, I summoned the necessary gumption and headed up the tower. I resolved not to look up or down this time and just counted the 24 steps up to the rotator. Fortunately, the repair was easy and the entire operation from bottom to top and back only took about 30 minutes. With at least a full week remaining in the 3Y0K operation I was ready to go!

What makes a DXer 'Deserving'?  THIS kind of foolishness!  It was minus 23C (about 10 below F) that day.

I really wasn't too sure what to expect for propagation.  Long haul paths like Inuvik to Bouvet Island are always sketchy at this point in the solar cycle with strong geomagnetic activity affecting HF signals at high latitudes like ours.  To make matters worse, the 3Y0K camp had a somewhat poor shot towards North America with a large mountain in the way.  Interestingly though, my signal path to Bouvet skirted along the Arctic coast for the first 4500km and the remaining 3/4 of the way was all open ocean.  I felt I had a good chance of making at least one contact on 20m, always the best band from up here, but I needn't have worried.  On the same day I fixed the rotator they were very workable that evening on 40m FT8 and I easily put them in my log for country #328!  Once the first contact was made I had hoped to get them at least on CW mode and maybe a couple of other bands.  I listened every morning and every evening for the rest of the week but despite excellent conditions on 20m they were never operating there while I was on.  I took an extended lunch hour one afternoon and came home to check the bands.  They were quite strong on 17m FT8 and I quickly worked them for my second band.  As soon as I headed back to work they finally came up on 20m.  I had left my radio on and watched the 20m spots from home being reported so after an hour I decided to bail and just come home early.  As luck would have it, they switched bands as soon as I left my office and when I got back they were already gone.  That night I floundered around in a huge pileup on 20m CW for a few hours but never got through and the day after that the bands tanked and they were gone.  Camp and antenna teardown began shortly afterwards and soon it was all over.
 

I certainly can't complain about only two contacts, I was thrilled to finally be able to work Bouvet.   Only 16% of their over 100,000 contacts were with North American stations and I know there were plenty of hams that weren't able to work them at all.  

The same team of operators is planning to go to Peter I Island next year (2027) which would be another new one for me.  Like Bouvet it is also a Norwegian remote territory in the far, far south but Peter I is almost straight south of me which is always a good thing for radio propagation.  Fingers crossed for that one!

73 and Good DX! 
John VE8EV

DX Year(s) in Review

Still not much going on with ham radio here.  I get on every once in a while when there's an opportunity to work a new one and fortunately, that still seems to happen every now and then.

Right after my last post about working FT8WW on Crozet Island I finally had another opportunity to work Burundi, my last needed country in Africa.  This has been a surprisingly long quest!  I first worked Burundi back in the nineties but the station I worked ended up having some paperwork issues and the DXCC credit was removed.  An expedition in 2017 coincided with terrible radio conditions and I just wasn't able to hear them.  Fortunately, in early 2023, another expedition went to Burundi and this time (Long live FT8 mode!) I had no trouble putting the 9U5R/9U4WX team in the log for #324.

I guess I'm starting to get used to missing Bouvet Island.  I wrote about the aborted 2018 Bouvet operation.  Big ships and helicopters (mostly fuel for big ships) requires a lot of money and that failed operation cost the operators, sponsors, and contributors (like me!) a cool half a million dollars.  Another operation to Bouvet in 2023 had a different approach.  They figured instead of helicopters they could land on a tiny beach to get ashore with all their equipment but it was not to be.  The beach ended up being too rough for landings.  In desperation, a few team members were able to swim ashore in survival suits and float some equipment in but all the big generators, amplifiers, and antennas they brought had to stay on the ship.  Suffice to say, the puny signals from their barefoot radios and wire antennas never made it this far north and I missed Bouvet AGAIN!  However, the same team is going to have another crack at it in 2026 (this time with a helicopter) and Peter I Island in 2027 which is also on my 'needed' list.  Fingers crossed third time will be the charm!

A relative newcomer to the DXCC list, Swains Island was first on the air in 2007 and then activated by a larger group of operators in 2012.  I was right in the middle of moving at that time and I missed it completely.  After a two-year delay due to the pandemic, in October 2023 another team activated Swains again and I was able to work them for #325.  Conditions were excellent at the time and I got them on every band from 160m to 10m and all three modes too!

 

I don't usually work SSB anymore but I did for this one and my QSO just happened to make it into this video of them working the 10m band. You can hear me get through at the 16:23 mark.

Last year, Marek FH4VVK was able to secure permission to operate from Glorioso Island. The previous expedition to Glorioso was FT5GA in 2009.  I recall being somewhat annoyed at the huge volume of DX spots generated for that operation and presumed at the time (almost certainly incorrectly!) that there was not a chance I'd be able to hear them so I never even tried. This time, FT4GL was on the air at the end of May/early June.  Conditions weren't great but I was able to catch them on 17m for a quick "one-and-done" to get my #326.

This past January saw a "pop-up" (not previously announced) dxpedition to Mount Athos!  The very last European entity I needed, it was only put on the air infrequently by a couple of resident monks at the Mount Athos monastery in Greece.  For hams in western North America it was high on the "Top 10" list of most-wanted entities.  It had been added to the DXCC list due to a rules quirk in the early 1970's and has since been "grandfathered" in.  Permission to operate for hams other than the resident monks was almost always refused and rivalries between the local Greek hams and the various monasteries on the mountain made sure the situation stayed that way.  Nevertheless, in January this year, a small group (including famed dxpeditioner Martii OH2BH) was able to get authority to operate and immediately went on the air.  Astonishingly, those previously mentioned rivalries managed to get the operation shut down after only a couple of days and all the operators arrested!  The team was able to demonstrate to the authorities that their authorization was valid under Greek law and they were released but were not able to continue the operation.  For a couple of months afterwards there was a lot of rumours and innuendo but surprisingly, in April the DXCC Advisory Committee approved SV1GA/A for DXCC!  It was a very short operation but luckily I had been able to catch them on two bands for my #327

Dxpeditions to three of the four more I need for DXCC Honor Roll (out of only 13 total remaining) have already been announced for the next couple of years so I'm not going anywhere yet.  Who knows what the future holds but I'm only a year and a half away from retirement.  I'll have a lot more time to play radio then!

Auroral Zone Case Study

I haven't had much time for radio these days.  At this latitude, the return of the sunspots put the kibosh on my 160m dxing and with 322 (mixed, current) DXCC entities confirmed there haven't been any workable new ones available for me.  My Station 2021 project has been languishing and even my existing station has fallen into disrepair.  My rotator quit working in 2021 and this spring I accidentally overdrove my amp and blew something.  Life was busy but sooner or later something would come along that motivated me to get back on the air.  I still followed the DX news and was keeping an eye out for any new ones coming along.  I followed (and donated to) the 3Y0J expedition to Bouvet Island, still on track for the end of January 2023, and also took note of the one-man operation heading for Crozet Island.  When Thierry F6CUK arrived on Crozet and began operating as FT8WW over the Christmas holidays I knew that it was time to get it together.

When swapping out a couple of boards in the amplifier didn't solve the problem I determined it had to be an issue with my homebrew T/R switch and attenuator.  After removing it and putting it on the bench I found that a 50 ohm resistor in the attenuator had failed.  Stands to reason that accidentally pumping 100 watts into a 30 watt resistor too often would eventually lead to problems!  I was already planning to replace one resistor in there to adjust for my new 10-watt IC-705 but I didn't have any spare non-inductive 50 ohm resistors.  Nothing in the junk box either but I did find an old splitter/combiner set that each had a 25 ohm resistor so I put them in series and voila- problem solved.  Fortunately, the antenna with the broken rotator is pointed North over the pole so I didn't have to climb the tower in the dark and 40 below, at least not until the Bouvet activation later this month. 

Once all that and all the other minor repairs and software upgrades were done it was time make a contact!  Well, that part was not going to be so easy.  FT8WW was so far only using a low wire antenna .  The active solar conditions would make signals very weak as the path between here (at 68 degrees North) and Crozet (nearly antipodal from here) travels straight over the North pole (which means passing through the aurora TWICE) and then all the way down the other side of the world.  At least we marginally shared a grey line between midnight zulu and 0200z.  That would be the best time to try.

The entire eastern hemisphere is straight over the pole from here and Crozet is no exception.

Conditions were lousy all week.  The elevated X-ray Flux attenuates signals like crazy up here!

I was in the shack every evening watching for him.  He was operating mostly FT8 digital mode and alternating between the 30m band and the 20m band.  FT8 is great for making contact with weak signals but it is strongly affected by the multipathing and phase shifting from the aurora.  The sun was spitting out B and C-class solar flares every few hours.  The aurora was blazing overhead and the absorption was extremely high.  Most of the time I could only decode a few of the hundreds of other stations calling FT8WW.  You could even see on the waterfall display how the geomagnetic activity messed with the signals.  Instead of straight lines on the scope they would often "bend" in the middle like digital macaroni.  Occasionally I would see a weak trace on the scope that I assumed was FT8WW but the horrible conditions prevented successful decoding.  I could see the KL7 stations in Alaska calling and giving him good signal reports but even stations only a few hundred miles south of here have a path to Crozet that manages to skirt the edge of the auroral oval and follows the grey line perfectly.

Nevertheless, I persevered. Finally, on New Year's Eve, FT8WW was on 30m around 0100z and as I watched the signals all started to get a bit stronger.  Then I finally got ONE decode of FT8WW, only -18dB.  Three minutes later I got another decode, this time -15dB.  I started calling him.  4 periods (2 minutes) later he decoded again, this time I got both of his streams (he was using MSHV and running two carriers).  Then nothing again for another 5 minutes.  I could SEE his transmissions on the display but they just weren't decoding.  Finally, I got another decode and it was the one I wanted to see. He was answering me!  I acknowledged my report (sent RR73) and right away received an RR73 from him.  Done and done.  And that was it!  I didn't get any more decodes after that.  I only received a total of 7 transmissions from him and between calling and answering I transmitted 13 times over six minutes.  

So what actually happened in that very short time span?  Here is what I think was going on.  The first thing was the auroral oval.  Here is the NOAA Ovation forecast for that period around 0100z:

You can see that there is a gap in the oval around solar noon.  I was just inside the gap which probably helped to get his signal down to me.  The path between us (marked in red) also crossed a slightly narrower auroral band on the other side of the pole.

Shooting through the gap helped but the real answer was the solar wind.  Like earthly wind, it "blows" fast or slow depending on the level of solar activity.  The stronger the solar wind the worse the space weather is for HF radio in the polar regions.  And again like the earthly wind, it also has "gusts" but these variations aren't changes in the speed.  They are changes in the magnetic polarity.  In the Northern auroral zone, the more negative the magnetic polarity the stronger the geomagnetic badness is.  Here is the NOAA real-time solar wind plot for the time of my contact:

You can see right at the time I started getting a few decodes from FT8WW, the magnetic polarity (Bz) of the solar wind peaked in the positive direction which momentarily eased the distortion from the electromagnetism.  This effect is especially pronounced on the lower HF bands.  Our contact was on the 30m band which tends to share characteristics of both the lower and higher bands.

#323 finally in the log!

As an aside, for those radio Luddites out there, CW transmissions are also affected by the geomagnetic field here in the same way.  For anything faster than about 15 words-per-minute, the multipath distortion makes CW sound like a weak RTTY signal.  The differences between dots and dashes is virtually indistinguishable.  Think about that the next time you're in the ARRL CW Sweepstakes looking for that NT multiplier but blasting away with the keyer set at 30wpm!

Next up at the end of January is a two-fer: Bouvet Island and Burundi, both of which I have been waiting for a chance at for a long time!  The last attempt at both of those did not end well but I have a feeling that 2023 is going to be the year they finally make it into the log.  Fingers crossed!

Station 2021

Looking only at the content of this blog you might think there was not much going on here recently.  That is true to a degree.  I was working 160m pretty regularly late last year and recently I've managed to get on the 17m and 30m bands enough to confirm DXCC on both.  That just leaves 12m and 160m to complete 9-Band DXCC.  I still need 9 more all-time-new-ones on any band to make DXCC Honor Roll but that's just a waiting game.  Only the much-cursed Burundi is not at the top of the most-wanted list but still not confirmed in my log.  It will likely be years before the rest of the rarest-of-the-rare are ever on the air at all.  The time has come, however, to make some big changes.

Somewhat by design and some by coincidence, I have always changed things up along with the progress of the 11-year solar cycle.  I built my first high-performance HF station for contesting and DXing back in 2013 at the beginning of Cycle 24.  As the cycle began to wane in 2017 I optimized the station for working the lower HF bands and I cruised through the sunspot minimum over the past few years without skipping a beat, earning the 5-Band DXCC award and DXCC Challenge.  Now that the sun is starting to awaken again it is time to make changes.

I've been dreaming of building a 2m EME station for 25 years now.  I've built huge imaginary antenna arrays in my head and even started building a tube-type VHF kilowatt amplifier once (it was a fail).  Back in 2015 I started to get more serious about the whole idea.  I completed the hardware and software for the azimuth/elevation tracking equipment.  I found W6PQL's web page and started planning for a solid-state LDMOS amplifier.  Most importantly, I started collecting all the little bits and pieces that I would need to put everything together.  I found a 2000W 50V power supply on eBay for $30.  I scavenged coaxial relays, hardline cable and connectors, aluminum tubing and rod for antennas, and a huge assortment of other odds-and-ends that will all have their place in the final product.  I'm even planning to repurpose the 50W UHF amplifier module that I build a few years ago.

For HF I had wanted to put up my DMX tower and the TH6DXX again but concluded that a more sensible option would be a smaller tower with a 10/12m duoband yagi (built from old TH3JRS parts) and a re-worked 6m yagi.  I really hadn't given too much thought to six meters but then I had a good idea for a small linear amplifier to use on that band and with the optimized yagi it should be good for making EME contacts on the horizon (at least with the "big guns") and working the infrequent band openings, possibly even over the north pole.

In the past my plans had always included my venerable Kenwood TS-2000.  It was the only radio I owned with VHF/UHF capabilities but it had long ago succumbed to the endemic TS-2000 filters failure, ostensibly caused by overheating the ceramic filters when production first changed to lead-free solder.  A couple of years ago however, I was considering a new radio to put in my boat and came across the first information about the then-unreleased Icom IC-705.  It was only a 10 watt QRP radio but I thought that maybe with some outboard amplifiers it might be okay for marine use.  The more I thought about that the more I realized that I'd rather have the IC-705 in the shack and just fix the old Kenwood to use in the boat.  I already had an HF amplifier that only required 50mW drive power and a VHF LDMOS amplifier would likewise require only a few watts of drive.  The 705 also boasted an astonishing array of features like a direct-sampling DSP receiver, touch screen, bluetooth, GPS, DStar, and on and on and on.  The only thing it lacked was full-duplex cross-band receive which I required for working satellites.  That was easily fixed by including a dedicated SDR receiver in my plans.  The FunCube Dongle Pro+ that I already had would work perfectly for this.

Over the past few months I got more serious about getting this all done THIS YEAR.  I relentlessly completed all the detailed design drawings for the controls, feedlines, and antennas.  The concept is a simplified design that will make everything happen with the flexibility to work HF and 6m, satellite, and 2m EME, provide high performance and low-loss, while also protecting the expensive amplifier components.  After innumerable iterations and revisions, all the details have now been finalized and I have almost completed obtaining all the remaining parts required to make everything happen.  Only the IC-705 is waiting to join the party.

This is how it will all go together.  Blue is RF and red is control lines.  I'm very excited to finally get on with the new build and look forward to blogging about all the individual elements as they come together.  Stay tuned!

DX Year in Review

Shortly after I wrote my last annual 'DX Year' post in early 2020, things changed pretty fast once all the travel restrictions came into effect from the global pandemic.  Nevertheless, despite the lack of DXpeditions, in November I finally managed to break my two year dry spell and worked JX2US on Jan Mayen Island for an all-time new one #322.

Despite its relative proximity to me, there has not been much activity from Jan Mayen in the last 10 years and I somehow managed to miss every dxpedition and the occasional operator at the Norwegian weather station there.  Ken LA7GIA put in a brief appearance (only a couple of hours) from there in 2019 but was planning a much larger operation for 2021.  Then Eric, LA2US, was posted to the island around the same time the dxpedition was announced, and eventually it was cancelled when Eric announced his intention to make an effort to fulfill the needs of DXers such as myself (which he did admirably!).  I never did catch him on 160m as I had hoped but I did manage a few contacts on 40m and 60m during his time there.

In early February I started to notice that I had amassed almost 1000 DXCC Challenge points and a little push was all it took to confirm enough on LoTW to qualify for the award.  A couple of years ago I had passed on the new plastic 5-Band DXCC Plaque (I ended up just getting the certificate and making my own 'old-school' plaque) but the new plastic DXCC Challenge plaque looks pretty nice hanging on the wall of the shack here.

 

I spent a lot of time on 160m this season (September through December) and picked up a dozen new ones there to bring my total up to 70 confirmed on that band.  Those four months are really the only productive ones for DXing on 160m from here.  I'm not sure why but long-distance 160m propagation always tanks right after the new year even though we still have lots of dark hours left.  It will be interesting to see what happens next season with the increasing solar activity.  I'm not expecting conditions to be very good on Top Band from under a mostly disturbed auroral oval. 

That said, in keeping with the start of the new solar cycle I'm already making plans for higher bands and some other interesting activities.  Stay tuned!

73

Here It Comes!

On November 16th, 2020 the reported sunspot number was zero.  Since then it has rocketed up to an astonishing 83 as of November 29th.  The sunspot number wasn't forecast to hit that level until 2023 but, ready or not, here it comes: solar cycle 25.  The starting date of a solar cycle is actually determined retroactively and a few months ago it was determined that cycle 25 really began a year ago in December 2019.  For hams, though, the real beginning of a new cycle is when the solar flux starts getting high enough for the upper HF bands to open up and starts generating stronger signals than we are used to on the middle bands.  I had noticed quite a few times recently that the 12m band was open, mostly to the US west coast and Asia.  Last Friday, however, even 10m was open and I made my first new contacts on that band since 2015.  Just for fun, I even made a series of QSOs that started on 10m and progressed through each band all the way down to 160m (I didn't have any luck on 60m, even though I was hearing a few weak European stations).  A couple of days before that I had worked a guy in Washington state on 40m FT8, off the back of my beam, only running driver power (15 watts) and I got a report from him of +23dB.  I was seeing him at +31!!  I can see how the effectiveness of the FT8 mode may soon become somewhat degraded as more and more powerful signals are crammed into such a tiny sliver of spectrum on each band.  Some expansion of the FT8 sub bands seems very likely in the coming years.

Ol' Sol has unexpectedly become quite active!

Its not all fun and games, though.  The more active the sun becomes, the more it tends to disrupt propagation for high-latitude stations like mine.  The more active part of the cycle is marked with lots of minor disturbances that stir up the aurora and generally degrade propagation.  Now the increased solar flux is making for stronger signals that can more easily break through the disturbed conditions.  On days when the absorption is low and the flux is high (like last Friday) radio conditions here can be outstanding.  There is also an increase in major disturbances like the little M-class solar flare that we saw this past weekend. I saw icons and colors on my propagation monitoring software that I haven't seen for years as the D-layer absorption spiked here and both the x-ray flux and proton flux climbed off the bottom of the scales where they've generally been sitting for the past few years.  I blogged about how this tends to degrade the signals here back at the beginning of the last cycle and the details haven't changed at all.  See here and here.  An active sun makes for some very interesting effects up here in the polar region.

Colorful, isn't it?  :(

When the last solar cycle was winding down in 2015 I put a lot of effort into getting my station ready for the sunspot minimum and it was well worth it. I received my 5-Band DXCC award by finally working the necessary number on 80m and I'm even up to 72 countries worked to date on the 160m band.  Now, with the changing of the radio seasons upon us, I'm thinking about putting up antennas for the high bands again.  I don't know yet how the coming of the new maximum will change my operating habits but it always has before.  I don't expect that this time will be any different...

Marine Mobile

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of camping out on the water in our family's big cabin cruiser.  My dad would bring along a Heathkit receiver that he built and while we relaxed and fished he would listen to interesting stuff like hams and marine HF-SSB ship-to-shore traffic.  I would marvel at the fact that we were on a boat out in the middle-of-nowhere in the Arctic and listening to cruise ship passengers phoning home from the Caribbean.

After languishing under a tarp at my dad's place for 20-odd years, the old boat eventually followed me home and in 2015 I did a complete restoration on it.  Ham radio was in the plan from day-one.  During the refit I made sure to install all of the antennas and cabling that would be required.  The HF antenna is a 19-foot long two-piece fiberglass vertical mounted on the gunwale with a counterpoise of 2-inch aluminum foil tape run along the inside of the hull right at the waterline.  On the roof I installed an MFJ-1436 tri-band whip for VHF/UHF and 6m.  I used the aluminum tape again under the fiberglass to form a suitable ground plane for the whip which I intended to use mostly for working satellites.  Summers up here are quite short and it was already August that year before the boat was finally ready to go in the water.  The installation of the radios had to wait until the next season.

Back on the water after all those years.

My plan for the radios got somewhat complicated.  What I really wanted was an SDR version of my venerable old Kenwood TS-2000.  My Kenwood was gathering dust, having fallen victim to the dreaded "ceramic filters failure", and there was nothing available in my price range that did 100-watt HF, full-duplex all-mode VHF/UHF for satellites, and was SDR-based.  The closest I could come up with back then was a Flex-1500 QRP radio with an HF amplifier and transverters and amplifiers for VHF/UHF.  I'd mount all the gear in a portable travel case and bring along my laptop to operate with.  To make it all work the way I wanted would take a lot of homebrewing.  The HF part was easy, or so I thought.  In the junk pile I had an old commercial HF transceiver.  I pulled the 100-watt amplifier off of it and added connectors and a T/R relay.  Since I planned to operate into a non-resonant antenna, I bought a cheap manual antenna tuner which would also take care of harmonic filtering.

The VHF/UHF part was even more complicated.  The little Flex radio had a separate transverter output so I built a pair of switchable transverters and brick amplifiers for each band.  Since I needed full duplex for satellites, I opted for a separate receiver using an RTL USB dongle built into the transverter box.  With everything bench tested in the shop and mounted on a plastic board in a carrying case I was ready to go.  Or at least I thought I was.  I took all the gear and put the VHF/UHF whip on my truck to see how it worked.  It didn't.  I couldn't seem to hear anything.  I pulled out my Arrow dual-band yagi and that seemed to receive ok but, despite my best efforts at shielding when I built the transverters, there was significant desense when I was transmitting on the opposite band.  I had a FunCube Pro SDR dongle which I pressed into service to replace the RTL stick (thereby bypassing the 10m IF chain) and it worked but obviously some re-engineering was needed.  With the 2017 boating season fast approaching I decided to just focus on getting the HF setup going.

As I mentioned before, the summers here are short.  If time and weather cooperates I can maybe get the boat in the water a dozen times between mid-June and Labour Day.  Over the next couple of summers I'd bring the radio case and the laptop out with me every once in a while but getting it to work on HF proved surprisingly frustrating.  The manual antenna tuner was very finicky and the laptop running the PowerSDR software would frequently lock up from RF on the USB cables before I could get the tuner adjusted.  I'd spend a half-hour or so and then give up until next time.  More ferrites.  Different cables.  Oops, the amp blew up, need another one.  Maybe an auto tuner?  Nope, won't tune with so many unattenuated harmonics.  Oops, blew up another amp. After the summer 2019 season I officially gave up.  That winter, I sold off the Flex radio and the auto tuner and decided to just fix up the old TS-2000 and use that.  A handful of new ceramic filters and a couple hours of delicate solder surgery was all it took.

With the repaired TS-2000 in the boat this summer, I got the HF working right away in June.  I had initially assumed that the auto tuner in the radio would be able to load the big fiberglass vertical but alas it would only tune up on 30m.  Before the next trip I put the old manual tuner from the previous iteration in and was then able to operate across the HF bands.  I also gave up on the big laptop and opted to use the Pipo X8 that was already mounted on the dash.  The little nav computer was a bit slow but would run WSJT-X without much difficulty.  I still wasn't having much luck with VHF/UHF though.  The MFJ antenna didn't seem to work at all.  After checking all the cables I started to think that there might be something wrong with the antenna itself.  Since by this time it was long out of warranty, I decided to just buy a new one.  At the same time, I also opted for another automatic antenna tuner.  The manual tuner did work but was still finicky and the longer this project dragged on the less patient I was becoming.  After scouring the marketplace I found that HRO in Anaheim had stock on both an MFJ-939 auto-tuner with the Kenwood cable AND a replacement antenna.  Being so close to everything finally getting sorted out, I also opted for express shipping.  Even here in the far north, Priority Express mail from the USA gets here in about a week.  HRO shipped them out the same day and I followed the tracking as the package passed through LAX and landed in Vancouver two days later.  Then, nothing.  No more tracking updates.  USPS said it arrived in Vancouver, Canada and Canada Post said it was waiting to receive it.  I thought maybe it fell off a truck or something!  After 21 agonizing days (yes, THREE WEEKS!) Canada Post finally received the package and sent it to clear customs.  It was out of customs the same day and arrived here a week later.  I have no idea what it was doing all that time at the airport in Vancouver but I did see anecdotal reports of mail backed up at the border for weeks on end so I was just happy to have it eventually arrive here intact.

The HF station mounted at the helm.  The radio on the left is a marine VHF.

I installed the new tuner right away (works great!) and a couple of weeks ago I got around to replacing the VHF/UHF antenna.  Unlike the HF (which only works on the water), I could do this part in the driveway.  Armed with my SWR meter, antenna analyzer, cables, and the HF/VHF/UHF triplexer, I pulled the boat out from under the carport and put up the new antenna.  After checking everything and hooking up all the cables and the triplexer, I made a satellite contact on AO-91.  After four years of monkeying around I finally had it all working!  I gathered up all of my tools and test gear, closed up the boat, and put it back under the carport awning, eagerly anticipating the next boat trip.  I paused as I walked into the house and a sinking feeling came over me.  I went back outside to look and, sure enough, I forgot to fold over the antenna after I was done and broke it off backing under the carport. $@#%!^@#$!!!

Actually, this story does have a happy ending.  All that broke was the brass NMO mount and I was able to quickly rustle up a replacement and install it.  I loaded fresh Keplerian elements into Orbitron and set up WiSPDDE to handle the radio tuning.  In between fishing and relaxing last weekend I made over a dozen satellite contacts as we swung on the hook in a beautiful local lake.  Life is good!

DX Year in Review

I suppose I could have just left the rest of this post blank.  For the first time since I was licensed (and active) there were no new DXCC entities worked in a calendar year.  Ducie Island in 2018 was the last one.  Things are looking up for 2020, however.  Preparations for the expedition to Swains Island in March are proceeding apace and has now been joined by a surprise announcement of a trip to St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks, also in March.  And maybe, just maybe, this will also be the year that the Rebel DX Group makes it all the way to Bouvet Island.  Time will tell...

In the meantime I've been chipping away at 160m and picking up the odd one here and there on 80m.  I just noticed recently that I'm only about 50 away from the DXCC Challenge award for working 1000 band/country slots.  Not quite sure how I managed that but I guess they do add up over time.  To that end, when nothing else interesting is going on I'll watch 40m and pick up new ones there if they pop up.

Hopefully I'll have more to write about in next year's review!

73 and good DX


Update: Since I wrote this less than two weeks ago BOTH Swains Island and St. Peter St. Paul Rocks expeditions have been postponed or cancelled!  I will surely be stuck at 321 forever :(

What Goes Around Comes Around

At this point in the solar cycle (and especially from my high-latitude location) coronal holes on the face of the sun have the most effect on HF propagation.  The coronal holes spew high-energy streams of particles which are deflected by the earth's geomagnetic field and generally rain down on the polar regions causing high absorption and displays of Aurora Borealis.  On the lower bands the effect is especially pronounced.  An absence of coronal holes and weak solar wind makes for good radio conditions.

There was a recent mention in the K7RA Solar Update (and the Contest Update) of a NASA web page from a couple of years ago showing how different latitudes on the sun rotate at slightly different speeds.  It was an interesting thought exercise but most of the earth-directed solar badness seems to come around on a fairly reliable schedule every 28 days.  Equally as important, if not more so, is that exceptionally quiet solar conditions recur on the same schedule.

After finally working 100 DXCC entities on 80m last winter, this season I turned my attention to 160m.  So far, this has been a great season for "top band" propagation into the polar region.  Since the end of September I've been working a steady trickle of new ones on 160m CW and FT8.  One date, however, stood out.  Conditions were amazing on October 22nd!  I worked a total of FOUR new ones on that day and I immediately marked my calendar for November 18, exactly 28 days later.

The rest of October and early November were pretty good for 160m from the Arctic.  I typically spend an hour in the morning before work and an hour or two (or three...) at the radio in the evenings.  Sometimes a new one, sometimes just North American stations, sometimes no propagation at all.  Then, just like clockwork, that quiet spot on the sun finished rotating around and faced the earth again.  The solar wind and other numbers didn't really seem to be much different from the days before but, sure enough, band conditions were stellar.  I worked FOUR more new ones on November 18th!



The dates in this table are the UTC dates which roll over in the evening here.

If things continue like this it looks like another seemingly impossible task, DXCC on 160m from inside the auroral zone, should be wrapped up in the next couple of years.

Hope to work you on December 15th!

73
John VE8EV







For Sale

I'll often hang on to extra things I have 'just in case' but with ham radio stuff I think its time to let go of some things. I've been procrastinating on posting my surplus equipment for sale for a while now but I recently firmed up plans for a couple of road trips so I might be able to deliver the heavier items or at least move them closer to civilization. It would be great to see these things get into the hands of other amateurs that can enjoy them.

I did up a separate web page of the for sale items: https://www.qsl.net/ve8ev/ForSale.html

Update 5/26/21: Everything is sold except for the monster amplifiers and the rx array system.

Update 4/27/25: Still have the monster amps and the rx array.  Make me an offer if you're interested!

73

John VE8EV

10 Years On

It seems hard to believe but its been 10 years since I first started my little blog here.  So much has changed over the years.  Ham radio still has its exciting moments but I don't seem to feel the same urge to prattle on about things as I used to.  Whenever something new and unusual happens I do try to write something about it but the past few years have mostly been just working DX and incremental improvements to the station.  What strikes me most looking back is how my interests have evolved along with my station improvements and, mostly, the progress of the 11-year solar cycle.

Beginning back at the last solar minimum it was so difficult to make contacts here.  I just couldn't understand how a single station could make thousands of contacts during a weekend radio contest when we struggled up here just to get a hundred into the log.  Boy, that sure changed as the cycle ramped up and we finally started to have some decent propagation.  I nearly lost my mind the first time operating in a contest where the signals never got snuffed out by the aurora: (ARRL DX - Life is Like a Box of Chocolates...)  Only a few years later as the cycle peaked I was setting records and hanging contest award plaques on my wall.  Unfortunately, after the highs of the solar maximum I seem to have completely lost interest in radio contesting.  Going back to the huge disparity between the conditions up here and "down south" after seeing what I was able to do on a more-or-less level playing field kind of saps one's enthusiasm for that sort of activity.

Some things just got left behind as the cycle ramped up.  I really enjoyed working amateur radio satellites and had hoped to one day build an EME-capable station.  One of my all-time most popular blog posts is the story of the capture here of telemetry from a wayward NASA satellite: (NanoSail-D: Sailing the New Sea)  As HF conditions improved, however, I spent most of my time building out that part of the station and the VHF/UHF stuff was put aside for another day.

Other things were left behind for different reasons.  Several extremely rare IOTA island groups were nearby and I invested a huge amount of time and treasure in "activating" them.  The culmination of my efforts was a 5-day stay on Greens Island in the NA-182 group: (CK8G - The Perfect Storm)  I made almost 5000 contacts from there in April 2010 but after that the novelty started to fade.  The next year VE8GER and I traveled to Tent Island in the NA-193 group.  Propagation was lousy and we ended up getting chased home by some unexpected bad weather: (XK1T - Snake Eyes)  It made for good stories but I haven't really had the urge to go back to any of these places yet and, thanks to my efforts, they are no longer considered that rare.

I had always been a bit of a DXer but once conditions had improved I realized that if I paid attention to what countries were active I could generally work anything that was on the air.  Between the countries I had worked as a beginner back in the nineties and the new ones that came along regularly, I did a pretty good job of getting everything in the log that was available, at least on one band or mode: (The Verdict is In)  By the time we slid into the current solar minimum I was needing only a couple of dozen more to have "worked them all".  The new ones keep trickling in and I try to make sure I don't miss any.  I still need a few that have been around sporadically (like SV/A and VK0M) but sooner or later I'm sure they'll find their way into the log.

The biggest shocker of all was the low bands.  When solar minimum conditions returned in 2017 I knew that was time to concentrate on trying to work new ones on 80m.  I thought that maybe if I focused my attention it might be possible to work 100 countries there and be eligible for the 5-Band DXCC award before I passed on.  I figured I might have four years now and at least four years at the bottom of the next cycle.  After that I wasn't so sure but if I worked at it then maybe it would happen.  What I didn't count on was how the new FT8 digital mode would take the ham radio community by storm.  Released in mid-2017 it allowed contacts to made under very marginal propagation conditions.  The instant popularity combined with being able to "see" all the stations that were active meant that instead of taking a lifetime it only took me 13 months to work those last 70 countries I needed to earn DXCC on 80m.  Now I think that DXCC is possible from up here even on 160m (and I'm well on my way already!)

I intend to keep writing here, perhaps not as often as I used to, but certainly whenever something noteworthy happens.  I don't know how many people out there actually read what I write but I love being able to go back myself and take a little walk down memory lane once in a while.  Maybe someday I'll turn it all into a book.

73
John VE8EV

DX Year in Review

Well, another year gone by.  Surprisingly, even starting 2018 with 316 current countries already confirmed it turned out to be a pretty exciting year for DX, even at this part of the cycle.

My first surprise was a "pop-up" dxpedition to Somalia in January.  Ken LA7GIA and Adrian KO8SCA traveled there in conjunction with Medecins sans Frontiers for a week long stay.  Conditions up here were especially bad and I was thrilled to make a single contact on 40m CW as I don't recall hearing them on any other band.

The next surprise was from Newington.  The ARRL unexpectedly announced that (finally!) the Republic of Kosovo would be added to the DXCC list effective January 21, 2018.  A massive dxpedition was quickly organized and went on the air as Z60A within days of the announcement.  Conditions here were abysmal and I only had a few days to try and work them before I set off for Hamcation in Florida.  I managed to pull a single CW QSO through the aurora on 30m right before we headed off on our trip.  The op at the other end busted my call (always the same story,  they hear VE8 but then they think that can't be right and change it to something more common like VE7 or, in this case, KE8) but that was easily fixed after the fact with a quick note to the leaders.

Without a doubt, the most anticipated dxpedition of the year was 3Y0Z, the huge operation scheduled to operate from Bouvet Island.  Now, when I say "scheduled" maybe that overstates things.  Perhaps "forecast" would be a better word.  The "forecast" given before the operation had always been "January 2018".  Around November 2017 I had realized that my winter holiday to Florida might conflict with the 3Y0Z operation so I rescheduled our departure from late January to early February just to be safe.  Time stood still in January leading up to our respective trips.  In mid-January the dxpedition team arrived in Punta Arenas, Chile.  We waited.  Days went by.  Finally, a week later, they set sail for Bouvet Island.  Its a two-week journey and I knew that was only going to leave me a small window to get in their log before I had to head out myself.  I got psyched up.  I've made it into the log on the first day with several other dxpeditions before.  I'll stay up all night if I have to.  I can do this!  The days dragged on as the ship steamed across the South Atlantic.  Finally, only six days before I had to leave, the team dropped anchor off Bouvet Island.  I know they'll need at least a couple of days to get set up and on the air.  Things are looking up but then the weather tanks.  High winds and rough seas.  Fog.  The days tick by.  Two days before my trip the awful truth dawns: I'm going to miss Bouvet!  There's no way now that they can possibly get ashore and get set up before I have to leave on my vacation.  I felt sick.  When would I ever have another chance at Bouvet?  I'll never forget that Saturday afternoon.  I was sitting at a local pub, glumly nursing an ale, when I heard the breaking DX news: BOUVET CANCELLED!  The ship had developed engine troubles and the captain decided it was unsafe to continue so they left.  Everyone was shocked and heartbroken!  Well, almost everyone was heartbroken.  I tried my best to look sad...


When summer comes to the Arctic I'll often go for weeks at a time without ever turning on my radio.  The summers here are fleeting and I usually concentrate on outdoor activities.  This summer, though, I had put a reminder in my calendar for the end of June to have a listen for the Baker Island expedition.  Not the best time for that kind of operation but that is the only time the authorities would permit them on the island.  OK, well, the mid-Pacific is a chip shot from here and even though our sun never sets at that time of year I figured I could probably even get them on 80m if I got up in the middle of the "night".  I made it into their log on the first day and the next day I turned on the radio to see if I could pick up a few extra bands and modes.  For the better part of the past year I had also been trying to work the lone ham radio operator in Libya, Abubaker 5A1AL.  He was quite active but not often on 20m which was pretty much the only possible band to work a low-powered station with wire antennas on the other side of the world from here.  Since I was in the shack I almost automatically took a look to see whether he happened to be on the air.  At that particular moment he was on 20m FT8!  I swung the antenna around and switched to 20m and there he was!  Not strong, only -16dB but for the first time ever he was "audible" here.  I fired up the amp, switched it to "Trans-Polar Mode" (ie; full power) and 5A1AL answered me on my first call.  A little while later I noticed that the Rx window in WSJT-X also still had my QSO with Baker Island right above the contact with 5A1AL so I grabbed a screen shot.  I looked back in my logs and it had been years since I had worked a new DXCC entity in June and the last time I had worked more than 1 new one in June was back in 1995!  A couple of days after that I did get up in the wee hours and worked the Baker Boys on 80m CW.

 

The last one on my radar for 2018 was VP6D, the expedition to Ducie Island.  I still remember back in 2008 when I was playing Elmer for VE8DW.  He called me excitedly one day to tell me he had just worked Ducie Island.  I had a pretty good recollection of what was on the DXCC list and I figured it was just some IOTA station.  It wasn't until a few years later I realized that it was a new DXCC entity.  Now, 11 years later, I finally had another chance.  I wasn't at all concerned about this one.  No matter how bad the propagation was I was sure it would work out ok.  Ducie is straight south of us and October is about the best month there is.  Sure enough, I worked them on every mode and every band from 160m-17m.  I even tried them a couple of times on 15m but without a proper antenna up for that band they never heard me though the big pileups.

80m was very good to me again this year.  On November 22nd I worked my 100th country on that band.  Instead of a lifetime, I worked the last 70 I needed in only 13 months, mostly thanks to FT8 but the total does include about thirty in CW and a dozen SSB contacts.  I've got them all confirmed now too but waiting for just one more on LoTW so I don't have to deal with any paper cards to apply for my 5-Band DXCC award.  I've also started dabbling in 160m and picked up a bunch of new ones there also but I don't expect to put nearly as much effort into that band as I did for 80m.

With Ducie in the log I've now started the countdown: only 10 more to go until DXCC Honor Roll.  I really have no idea how long that is going to take.  So far there are only one or two on the horizon for 2019 but time will tell!

73 and good DX
John VE8EV

Haunting 80

Solar activity varies over an 11-year cycle and that makes a huge difference on the HF radio bands, especially from up here under the auroral oval.  During the years of high solar flux levels the upper HF bands will regularly allow for global contacts but frequent solar flares and other disturbances will often cause complete radio blackouts that can last for days at this latitude.  At the other extreme, during the solar minimum, the sun is quiet.  There is little to hear on the higher bands but when the auroral absorption decreases some surprising contacts can be made from here on the lower HF bands.

One of the best things about this hobby is that there are 100 different aspects of it that can grab your interest.  I've blogged about some of the different stuff I've been into over the years but most things related to the HF radio part of this hobby have better times than others to experiment.  During the last rise to the top of the solar cycle I had a keen interest in contesting and DXing.  I set numerous VE8 contest records and worked plenty of DX on the upper bands.  Now that we're at the bottom of the cycle, one of the things I was planning to do was to put aside HF for a while and re-build my VHF/UHF station.  I was looking forward to setting up for amateur radio satellites again and even trying some Earth-Moon-Earth and troposcatter communications.  Then I decided to put it all on hold for a while.

Around this time last year I wrote about how I was working the 80m band with my upgraded antennas and the new FT8 digital mode.  After confirming only 35 countries on 80m over the first 24 years of my ham radio career, I realized then that I probably could work 100 countries on that band in my lifetime and qualify for the 5-Band DXCC award.  What I didn't know was that it was not only possible but I'll likely get there sooner than I ever would have thought.  80m is primarily a night-time propagation mode and we get a lot of that up here.  In the winter I spend an hour or so on the radio in the morning before work and a couple of hours in the evening as well.  Before I knew it, by spring time this year I had doubled my 80m country count to 70!  So far this past month I've already added 14 more and we're not even into the November-December-January "80m prime time" yet.  I'm 16 countries away from something I thought would take a lifetime and well on track to become one of the northernmost stations to ever make 5-band DXCC.

Every new one is thrill and the more DX I work the more I start to understand the low-band propagation up here.  First and foremost is the aurora.  If the K-index is 2 or more then forget about it, there's no DX to be had and often no signals to be heard at all.  Fortunately, at this part of the cycle a high K-index is usually caused by "holes" in the sun's corona.  Since the sun rotates on a 27-day cycle these come around on a predicable schedule.  After a coronal hole rotates out of view on the solar disk conditions will begin improve.  Every day the A-index (a daily average of the geomagnetic activity) will drop and after a few days 80m will come alive again.  Once the aurora is dealt with then there are daily variations to watch for.  For example, at this time our sunset coincides with midnight in the Caribbean and propagation from there peaks for an hour or so.  Since this is around early evening here I will often have the radio on while I'm preparing dinner. When the nice JT-Alert lady announces "New DXCC" I go in, turn on the amplifier, and (hopefully) work a new one.  Another regular enhancement is to the far East at our sunrise.  Last weekend I knew that the VK9XG expedition to Christmas Island was on 80m FT8.  I waited patiently and, sure enough, a few minutes before sunrise they popped up out of the noise and I made the contact.  Even better still, we get an opening  (when the A-index is low of course) over the pole to Europe at their sunrise.  There's still a lot of countries over there that I have yet to hear on 80m!

The station continues to perform very well on the low bands.  I re-oriented the half-sloper coming off my 80-foot tower to improve my signal to the North and that seems to have made a big difference to Europe compared to last season.  I also took down the pennant receiving antenna that I put up last fall as it was much noisier than using my yagi for receiving.  With the addition of a good preamp, the 17/20/40m yagi works well as an 80m receive antenna and it can be rotated as necessary to minimize any local noise.  The TMR1090 amplifier is still working great although I often wish it was "instant on".  It takes about 30 seconds to initialize and come on line but as soon as it does it will push a kilowatt on FT8 all day long.  I've also been working on getting a small phased vertical receiving system put up that I hope will do better at signals that are arriving vertically polarized (I'll report back when I get that up and running).
 

The sun is very quiet these days and about two weeks out of every four currently have an A-index low enough for 80m DXing.  The next few months should have the best low-band conditions since the last solar minimum.

DX is!