10h on CW and an exceptional trip to Ball’s Pyramid

One could think we are just running holiday operation style here. WRONG. Yep, leisure is a part of stay here, but it’s really hard to say if I’m having any rest in recent days as I get more and more into cw.

For last 2 days it’s been like dealing with a huge lack of sleep due to operating on bands during night time and being very active during daytime, too. We’ve been on 3,5h long trip. But let’s start this post with the ham stuff first.

After almost 4 hours spent on the sea, I went to bed for 1,5 hour at midnight. Chris VK3QB woke me up at 01:30 loc asking whether I could join the upper camp and help some with cw. So did I. 40 meters were great, but our 40m antenna went south right after a very sudden tropical rainfall. Later we discovered there was an issue with some water getting into a connector ruining its performance for good. We couldn’t get things fixed in total darkness there so I was forced to QSY to other bands. I started at Eastern Europe’s sunrise on 160 but after calling CQ for almost 1 hour and only 3-4 Q’s logged I just gave it up for a while as I’ve been not able to receive anything. Conditions were awful. 80m looked a bit better, but not that much as 40. After 8 hours I got swapped by Bob N2OO who continued on 160 while I’ve been battling with JA’s on 20 cw. Bob gave 160 up after 1h, too. After 9 hours on CW my concentration to pick up calls at once was really bad. I’ve been forced to resist one hour more while waiting for somebody to swap me. At the end I took a short recording for you while running the rest of my shift. I had big problems with that as once I got my MD recorder connected to rtx, audio became very dirty and harsh (it happens while on IC-7000 here on LHI but not on my 756 PRO 3 at home) making picking up calls really really difficult. So please forgive me all mistakes there at the very last of my 10th hour on the air last night. Nevertheless I’ve been really happy to run my very first pileups that long on cw in my life! Here comes the recording:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Now back to the trip ;-)

Yesterday we took a boat to see one of Lord Howe’s unique and remote places. Its name is Ball’s Pyramid. It’s a part of very very old volcano’s piece located several miles from the main island towards South. It’s stretching right from the Pacific Ocean and it’s a very sharp, rough, solid and tall rock formation. Actually it’s the tallest rock like that in the world as its altitude exceeds 550 meters high! There’s another unique thing about this place. There are many endemic species of plants and animals living there and nowhere else in the world. One of good examples are extremely rare stick insects reaching 20cm long. They were supposed to vanish from Lord Howe’s surface something like 80 years ago and scientists have been assuming they completely extinct. One of the latest expeditions to Ball’s Pyramid discovered them again just a few years ago but only several dozen creatures were found there. The Australian government allowed to take some to the mainland and to breed them to help this species to survive. What was special about our trip was how we managed to get some closer to the Pyramid. When we’ve been leaving Lord Howe’s harbor, the ocean seemed to be just fine - calm and pleasant. But not anymore once we got into the wide open waters. It started to be REALLY rough and our boat used to feel taking a crazy bull rodeo ride! At one time we were hopping over huge, massive waves and then taking a deep dive several meters deep. And again, and again… Our skipper said it’s been really rough even for him either. The whole trip took 3,5 hours of up and downs. And there was no wonder Tony IZ3ESV and his YL Maddalena got sea sick badly … Our photos don’t express too much what we’ve being experiencing there. The video I took does in a way, maybe. Thanks God once we reached the Ball’s Pyramid, waters became a bit calmer. We had a chance to feed loads of sea birds following our path all trip long. It was so great to discover and experience a very rough side of the Lord Howe’s nature for a change! Pictures say for themselves…

I surprisingly didn’t get sea seek at all, but I needed some good refreshment after holding a boat’s railing for over 3 hours and jumping to resists waves’ and our boat’s dynamic rhythm. This trip just helped me to decide to have another one next week - to the top of the highest mointain here - Mount Gower…

P.S. Check the photo section for the newest pictures I’ve uploaded