VX8X Photos

It turned out to be a beautiful day for a drive. The sun was shining, there was very little wind and the temperature was around minus 20C. Here are the pictures from the first day:

Hitting the road ...err... ice. On blue ice about half-way to Ellice. That's Richard's Island in the background. Oh, and don't worry about the ice. At this time of year it's about 12 feet thick.
Magnificent desolation. On the ocean heading north to Ellice Island.

On arrival at the island the first order of business was getting the Ellice Island Light & Power Company operational.

On the snow pad putting the baby yagi together. Not much to see in the background. Ellice is a pretty low lying island.

Mounting the Hy-Gain TH3JRS. The manufacturing quality is abysmal (malformed swaging, missing parts, sub-standard materials) but the performance is outstanding AND you can hold it with one hand!

Up she goes, just a small pause to untangle the 40m inverted vee.

World's lonliest ham shack, Ellice Island, Northwest Territories

I fit all the equipment into three rack shelves. Upper shelf had the tablet PC and the FL-2100B amplifier, the middle shelf held the TS-2000 and wattmeter and the lower shelf had a keyboard and an antenna switch. Off to my left out of view is the spare generator with a small piece of plywood on top holding my coffee maker. That was all, if I wanted to change my mind I had to go outside first. But at least it was warm!

 

Shot for a future CQ Magazine cover, hi hi.

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VX8X Write-up (Part II)

After all the trials and tribulations, ups and downs, and driving back and forth, by 0300z Friday night I was back on the island and ready to hit the air. I had committed to IREF to make at least 500 contacts to qualify for their generous grant and secretly I was hoping to put a 1000 in the log. Even as a multi-op station in recent contests we had never managed to make more than 600 QSO's but I knew that between the IOTA chasers and the prefix hunters I had a pretty good shot. My operating plan was pretty straightforward. Work Asia and Oceania in the evening then hit Eu sunrise and work Europe for as long as I could. If I ran out of propagation on 20m I would have to drop down to 40m and take what I could get. Grab a few hours sleep and be onto Europe again until their sunset then switch to North America until 20m opened to Asia again. Repeat as necessary. As it turned out, this was one part of the plan that never had to be revised.

I pointed the beam WNW and only had to call CQ two times before the first JA's, UA0's and UA9's started going into the log. A few minutes after that I was spotted on the cluster and we were off to the races. The VFO's were all ready to go split because I was anticipating a big pileup and I wasn't disappointed. Within ten minutes of getting on the air I was already operating split and keeping the rate at over a hundred an hour. By 0500z there were more Europeans than JA's calling so I swung the beam around straight over the pole. There were a LOT of early risers in Europe this weekend! The pileup was huge. I was already working split so I decided to try going by numbers. The pile didn't seem to be getting any smaller and the rate was starting to slip as I needed more and more fills to complete the contacts. I've worked European pileups before and I knew how to keep things moving but around 1:30am local time I decided to throw in the towel. I'd been on the go for two days straight and I knew I'd need to be in top form the next day. I fueled up the generator so it would be ready to go in the morning, warmed up the truck and crawled into my sleeping bag for a few hours of sleep.

I was up with the sun the next morning at 8am and it took almost 45 minutes to get coffee made, grab some breakfast and, most importantly, warm the shack up. At 1430z I took a spin through the bands to see how propagation was shaping up. Europe was coming through but I was still sleepy and a bit gunshy from the night before so I decided to beam North America to get warmed up. The first station I worked spotted me on the cluster and the rate took off instantly again. After only 20 minutes on Saturday morning I realized I had this thing beat. It was only the first hour of the first morning, the total QSO count was already approaching 500, and I was only getting started. Relieved that the pressure was now off, all warmed up and with the first cup of coffee starting to kick in I decided it was time fulfill my promise to give special attention to Europe. Shortly after 1500z I turned the beam back to Eu and for the next few hours I slogged it out with the Europeans. Fortunately propagation was good, and I was running split so they had no trouble hearing me.

No offense intended to anyone but pileups from different areas of the world are very different . I find pileups of Russian and Japanese stations to be very orderly. If you return a call and you get a letter or number wrong you sometimes have to coax the station into giving his call again so you can correct yourself. Everyone calls then everyone listens, just like it's supposed to work. The Europeans are a little more, uh, let's say 'free spirited'. I find the best way to run a European pileup is to be as polite and firm as you can, never reward bad behavior and keep repeating instructions over and over until everyone knows that they have to behave. As long as you can keep a decent rate going no one will get too frustrated. But its a lot of work, especially if propagation is good and there's a gadjillion stations calling.

After a couple of hours I needed a 'break' so turned the beam back to the southeast and started to pick up more W/VE stations. I stayed there all afternoon until 2130z when I hit QSO number 1000 and decided to stop for a bite to eat and tend to the Ellice Island Light and Power Company. I had already been already starting to get a few JA's calling in so I turned the antenna around to Asia and had an instant JA pileup. Unfortunately, it was still a bit early there and after an hour I started running out of callers so turned back to the south to work USA and pick up some South American and VK/ZL stations. As midnight zulu approached I was once again getting more and more JA's in off the side of the beam so it was back to the land of the rising sun to start over from where I had begun almost 24 hours ago. With the QSO count past 1500 there was no pressure at all now and the evening flew by with good rates and stations calling in from all over. After a weak ZL called in I decided to beam Oceania for a while and see if I could get some VK/ZL's or a few Pacific islands but didn't hear any. Around the same time, the other good news I came to realize was that I had plenty of fuel for the generator. I really didn't have much of an idea about how much fuel it would require and I had only brought 25 gallons. Now passing the halfway point knew I had enough to last for the duration (and then some).

The best part of the whole trip was just after sunset that night. I took some time-off to do a few housekeeping tasks (oil and fuel in the generator, warm up the truck, call home on the satphone, etc) and I paused to take stock of where I was, what I was doing, and how things were progressing. The sky was pink and purple in a typically beautiful Arctic sunset. There had been no equipment problems to date. The weather was still the same and, most importantly, I was pretty confident that unless the bands totally gave out on me, I'd be able to push past 2000 contacts before I wrapped things up the next day. I took a look through the log and it seemed to be split about 30/30/40 between Europe, Asia, and North America which sounded like a reasonable balance (the actual numbers ended up being 33/20/47). Propagation had been excellent so far. I had no idea what the flux or K-index were doing but as long as I kept putting contacts in the log I decided it didn't really matter. Life was good and I was very pleased at how everything was turning out.

Then I remembered 40 meters. There had been a bit of hew and cry for 40m during the original planning so I (somewhat reluctantly) included it in the plans. I decided to take some time to get on and see if I could work anyone. I called CQ on 7.160 for about 5 minutes with no takers so decided to try higher up the band in the US General class portion. After a while I worked a W1, a W8, a W5 and couple of VE7s. Then nothing. I thought to myself 'I gave up a pileup for this?' If I had been spotted I probably could have put a couple of hundred contacts in the log but given the way things had been going I decided that I would get back onto 20m and work Asia until European sunrise then call it a night. Propagation was great and for the next few hours I had a strong signal into Russia, Khazakstan and Ukraine as the greyline tracked across the Urals. Once the Europeans started calling in I quit for the night. I wanted to be fresh and hit Europe in the morning.

The last day dawned bright and early and first thing on the agenda was the final run of Europeans. Propagation wasn't as good as the previous night. The band was also crowded with contesters and rag chewers. I called CQ on 14.260 and found out that there was already another expedition on. I finally got a spot with enough space to work split and called QRZ? VX8X. As I had become accustomed to, an instant pileup ensued. This time though it was much, much harder to make a good rate. All weekend long I had been riding the RF gain and the attenuator to help sort out the callers but not today. The whole pileup was only registering about S-5 on the meter. Even split I was having a hard time picking out callers. Given the moderately crowdy conditions I was hesitant to start spreading the pileup out but I didn't have much choice. It was still slow going but once they were spread over 5 kHz the rate picked back up again.

Just like the previous runs, three or four hours of a huge pileup like that was all I could take. As conditions picked up late in the morning I started getting more and more W/VE's calling in off the side of the beam. Finally I decided to just turn the beam and run stateside. And run I did! I never had a big pileup but instead was blessed with a continuous flow of callers that I worked as fast as I could. For the last three hours my rate was over 150/hr as I ran stations like my hair was on fire. I even had one guy, thinking I was a contest station, give me a report of 59-001! Not only that but, despite the fact that the beam was pointed to the East coast, I was still getting lots of callers from Europe and even had several Middle East and African stations call in. I blew past 2000 contacts around lunchtime without even slowing down.

Shortly after 2pm I started thinking about how much work I had to do before I could leave. Everything had gone splendidly up to this point. The operation went better than I could have imagined so why push it? I was pretty tired and I didn't want to wait too late to tear down and then have to make the three hour drive back to town running on mental-empty. With just over 2200 QSO's in the log I decided to stop right then and there. I thanked the guys in the pileup for their patience but I had to go QRT. I turned off the radio and walked outside into the sunshine. I was surprised to see a very large silver fox nosing around the edge of the pad. He seemed completely unaware of the miracle that had just taken place in his frosty little backyard.

Final QSO tally: 2228
Breakdown is 1027 NA, 721 EU, 430 AS, 22 AF/OC/SA

VX8X a Success.

Got back from the island last night safe and sound. All went according to plan, the weather was good and propagation was excellent. Final QSO count was 2,228.

Thanks to everyone that took the time work me. I'll post a detailed write-up with more pictures tomorrow.

73
John - VE8EV

The lonely little shack on Ellice Island.

VX8X - On the way!

All the equipment is checked and loaded. Should be on the road by 1400z.

VE8DW cancelled at the last minute due to a stomach condition so its now a solo op. I expect to be QRV around 1800z for an hour then off until 0000z as I have to drive back into town to pick up more supplies and drop off my assistant. Spent all day Thursday running around arranging for generators, towers and fuel and carefully collecting and testing all the equipment.

Geomagnetic forecast is now iffy but will have to make the best of it. Look for me on 14.260 and 7.160 (listening up/down as necessary).

73 es Good DX!

VX8X is GO!

Today was good news / bad news time. The bad news was that the drilling operation shut everything down and left the island yesterday. Mighty unkind of them to not to keep their multi-million dollar operation going a few more days to accomodate our expedition! The good news is that the ice road is still in good condition and I've had a back-up plan all along just in case this happened. So instead of operating in the lavish comfort of the drilling camp we're going to have to rough it and bring along our own food, fuel, generators and towers. The communications contractor that was supporting the drilling operation has graciously offered us the use of one of their comm trailers which comes equipped with a 50 foot crank up tower and a comfy little shack to operate from. A couple of generators and a few drums of fuel and we'll be all set. The only changes to the operating schedule are that we're now going to arrive on the island Friday morning (N. America) instead of Thursday night and it will only be VE8EV and VE8DW so likely SSB only.

I'll post a final update before we hit the road Friday morning. Wish us luck!

John - VE8EV

CQ WPX - The One That Got Away

One of the very few advantages we have from our location is virtually unlimited real estate for an antenna farm. All the seeds are in place and by next fall we should have permanent towers and multiple antennas for all bands. At the moment, however, we're still doing it 'Field Day Style' and it's a HUGE amount of work to get set up for a contest. Then, even with all the antennas up, we haven't yet had decent conditions on more than one band at a time. Tearing everything down after the ARRL DX contest two weeks ago we decided that for WPX we'd pass on the multi-op, big gun station and just run from the driveway with the little tribander. A nice, casual, no-pressure operation was just what we needed. My only goal for this contest was to fill up the little multiplier window on the contest software (N3FJP) and maybe work a few new ones. By lunchtime Sunday I had both of those items checked off so I pulled the plug and walked away. But... I can't shake the feeling this would have been a great weekend to go big. Instead of closing down around 0200z like it usually does, 20m was open into the wee hours. The aurora came up a few times but for the most part the K-index was close to zero for the duration. Saturday night I accidentally clicked on a 40m cluster spot and the Europeans were booming in through the little tribander. I didn't hear anything on 15m all weekend but maybe with the big yagi up on the hill things would have been different. I think if we had set up the big station we could have finally made a 1000 Q's in a single contest.

Still, the contest was a lot of fun and best of all it was interesting. Lots of propagational quirks to add to the mental database, refined a few operating tricks, worked some new ones, and got some good feedback from other stations.

It's All About the Grayline

Sounds like a simple concept but the more I operate the more I see how it works. The best paths are always around our sunset to wherever the sun is rising. A month ago our sunset was around 6pm local time and coincided with JA sunrise. Not surprisingly, I could work JA's by the bucketful at that time. Now, our sunset is already pushing past 10pm which is sunrise in East Asia and the Middle East. Saturday night at that time I worked a couple of Khazakstan stations who both told me I was loud. I started CQing, had a few callers, got spotted on the cluster and BOOM. Instant pileup. The main reason this is really significant for us is that being on top of the world we have long sunsets for most of the year . In summer time the sun never quite sets and in mid-winter it never quite rises. You can sit there all day long and just track the gray line by who's loudest. Being at the equinox right now the sun sets pretty quick but in another month or so it will be skimming the horizon for hours at a time. I probably could have milked that opening all the way across the Urals into Eastern Europe but I had been up since 5am and...

Working Really Weak Stations is Exhausting

My guess is that the ratio of small stations (100W and wires) to big stations (yagi and amplifier) is probably about 10:1 if not more. This means that if you're getting out well you're going to have far more weak stations calling you than loud ones. Digging weak signals out of the QRN and QSB is hard work and even more so when they're DX stations that speak with an accent. Once I got spotted on the cluster I had lots of guys calling me who were barely audible. Throw in the accent, some QSB and a non-guessable contest exchange and it was hard work to complete the contacts. I didn't enjoy it at all. After half an hour of that the first time I called twice in a row with no answer I pulled the plug. I was too tired to worry about it at the time but the next day I actually felt guilty. I spend 90% of my time (or more) on the other end of that stick, shouting at guys that can barely hear me. Like the 3V8...

Spring Must be Just Around the Corner Because I can Hear Africa

March is the only month I have ever worked Africa. Maybe now that I'm running a bigger station in contests that might change but with the little tribander Africa only comes calling in March. Of all the countries I'm missing, most of them are in Africa. From here, Africa is straight over the pole and then all the way down the other side. No oceans to bounce off, just aurora, ice, and Europe. I was surprised to hear 3V8BB with a reasonable signal (the meter was twiching a bit). I had never worked Tunisia and he didn't have too many callers so I decided I was going to work him. It took about 10 minutes before he finally got a partial. Then another minute to get my full call. Then we came to the exchange. We tried about 10 or 15 times but he didn't get it. Then he gave up and called QRZ! I shouted the exchange at him a few more times but he had obviously moved on. Why didn't I just give him a ROGER ROGER when he came back with the wrong number? He'd lose the mult but I'd still get the card. Well, that wouldn't be very sportsmanlike, would it? So I hung in there for another twenty minutes and kept calling him. Finally he heard me again, recognized the call right away, and managed to catch my exchange. It was time for...

The Dance of DX

Come on, don't tell you've never done it. You're sweating it out in a pile-up for a new one. Propagation is going down hill, you know you might not get another chance. Then you get a lucky break. The DX calls again when everyone else is still shouting. You wait a second or two for the pileup to die down and you throw out your call with every decibel you can muster. You're rewarded with "Who's the Echo Victoria?" or some variation like that. Right after I got the 3V8 I was feeling cocky so I punched up the spot for the C91TX Mozambique expedition. I was hearing him pretty well and after the fourth or fifth call he came back with "Who's the Victor Echo Eight?" That's usually a show-stopper in a pile-up because right after that is always "Everyone standby, just the Victor Echo Eight station". The new one goes into the log and some obscure force of nature compels you to get out of your chair, pump your fist in the air and lead a little imaginary conga line around the shack. Note that for some reason, this only happens when you're calling them. If you're running and a rare new one calls in there is no dancing. If you're in a multi-op though, you can at least turn to one of the other guys, point at the screen and give a thumbs-up and a big grin.

Everyone Likes Positive Feedback

Another one of the very few perks of operating from up here is after a while people start to recognize your call. Every time I get on in a contest I get a few comments from other operators. Most of them are "Hope to work you in Sweepstakes!" but every now and then I get a compliment along the lines of "You guys are doing a great job up there, keep it up!". I even had OH2BH, Mr. Martii Lane himself, pause to say hello from OG8X when I called in. My favorite one all weekend though was from Bob, KQ2M, who said he really enjoyed reading the blog, keep it up. Who would have thought? The propagation on the Internet is excellent from here!

Next weekend we'll be on NA-192 Ellice Island in the Arctic Ocean as VX8X. Please drop by and say hello.

73,
John - VE8EV