VK9LA Lord Howe Island DXpedition 2009
VK9LA personal blog by SQ8X & SQ9DIE
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Good news, bad news…
Posted on March 30th, 2009 · 22:50 UTC No commentsHello! Will start with bad news ok? Good ones will improve our moods :-) I’m writing this post totally offline as we lost the Internet. Actually, the entire island went offline 2 days ago after we got hit by a tropical storm here. It’s all because of a very thick cloud cover blocking the sat link. There are very strong wind gusts reaching 70km/h since Saturday although it’s still warm and we wear t-shirts and shorts even during the night time. The ocean in VERY VERY rough and all trips like snorkeling and scenic cruises for tourists have been cancelled. Although we collected all logs (including all logs after the CQ WPX SSB contest) and merged them, we just can’t upload them. I’ve been trying to pass this info on the air to some ZL’s and hopefully it’s been already announced so that you know things have to wait for wx improvement now… We also have some rig issues. We lost 30m band pass filter and we must adjust roasters to not interfere any other bands while on 30. We also had major problems with Acom’s PA. It’s been tested in prior the expedition and it worked fine. Once we connected it at LHI, it seemed to be dead. Fortunately it’s been fixed and it works all fine now. Also the 40m antenna is back on the air. We suffer from 2 things that bother the team: once the storm stroke, our noise level from 160 to 30 m reaches s9+. Sometimes it’s just impossible to work even JA’s who are probably the strongest next to VK’s and ZL’s here. However we managed to work some ZS’s over the South Pole which is the most difficult path for our and their location. We noticed a very weird thing last night. Suddenly all bands were gone like somebody switched the light off. All signals vanished in 30-60 seconds and bands became totally clean except the QRN. Then, after 25 min, signals stroke like somebody put the plug back into a socket again. Very interesting as it never happened to experience such super fast things to any of us like that before. Regarding the QRN level yet: there is also an airplane beacon situated on the island which helps pilots to locate the island. Time to time, when it operates, it adds like s1-2 of noise level at all stations… I’ve got some kind of a virus infection of my throat and it hurts while speaking. Looks like I’m gonna reduce my SSB shifts dramatically as I try to avoid getting sicker. But will do my best during my night shifts on CW. I REALLY enjoy it and I never imagined I’d get along with those crazy pileups. It’s probably all thank to the Morse Runner which I use for off-the-air trainings at home. I do mistakes, of course, i.e. missing some characters at a first take but the longer I operate, the better. And I don’t log stations in until I’m 100% sure of their calls. I also try to pick up the weakest stations I can spot. I have a great fun in picking them up from the noise level and leaving huge guns for a next qsx round ;-) However after like 3-4h of operating cw my concentration takes a deep dive and I need some rest to handle pileups again. It’s all requiring more experience, which require more hours on cw, of course. Today I worked some of stations from my home area SP8 on 40/80 cw which was so nice! I also worked VK9GMW guys on 17/cw (with one take – it’s piece of cake from our part of the world heeee) and said “hi” to them. We really do cross our fingers for them as the place they’re transmitting from is one of the most dangerous reef locations for sailors in the world! Btw, somebody asked why are they stronger than us. The reason is simple: their antennas aren’t situated between huge hills like ours, but they are put straight into salt waters w/o any mountains around. In addition, they’re like 4000km towards North from our location which makes a huge difference regarding conditions, too. Yesterday we took a lot of “official” pictures of the entire team that will be used on the VK9LA’s QSL card I’ve been asked to design. Will do with a real pleasure ;-) I was told wx should slightly improve by Wednesday which makes some of us happy not only because the log uploads and checking our emails but also as the Mount Gower trip is set for that day. Attaching some of the newest pics we took. Can’t hardly wait to get this news posted for you. Ok going to bed as I’m supposed to get up at 02:45 here and to take a bike tire up to the cw camp. GN!
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