VK9LA Lord Howe Island DXpedition 2009

Online log coming soon

Hello. Beautiful sunrise over LHI. Going to the other camp with Pete SQ9DIE, Kasia, Maddalena and Tony IZ3ESV to set up the rest of laptops to work cw properly. I plan to set up the online log later today in local evening hours. It’ll be accessible at the official VK9LA website. Stay tuned.

Low bands are on, 20m ready for launching tomorrow

Here comes the latest news. Bill VK4FW, Bob N2OO and Chris VK3QB have been already working on 80/30m cw. Vicky SV2KBS hit 20m SSB running JA’s and some EU stations, too. They will continue tonight our local time, too. Tony IZ3ESV and I - Stan SQ8X will get all laptop’d ready for all band tomorrow our local time (around 19-20.00 z on March 24). Our second station for 20m is ready for SSB and RTTY now - waiting for our sunrise to get started. The rest of the team will get all remaining antennas ready by tomorrow. Until then we just can’t get used to this unbelievably jaw-dropping southern skies! The Milky Way is so much brigher than in Europe. Not even to mention all those exotic sights like the Southern Cross, or Magellan’s Clouds…

Welcome to Lord Howe Island!

After about 2 hours long flight from Sydney by Qantas Airlines we noticed Mount Gower - the highest mountain over LHI rising suddenly over horizon. Once we left the plane, we got totally stroke by humidity, warm air and fantastic aroma of flowers and Norfolk pines. There was a light shower right before our arrival but the wx forecast looks great.
EVERYTHING is so different here: colours of water, skies, natural green, woods… It’s nearly impossible to describe it but try to picture this for yourself like multiplying intense of colours by two, and visibility of the air and Pacific’s waters by three! And 25 deg. C in the Pacific Ocean sounds really welcoming… Everybody who is for the very first time can’t stop smiling and being so much pleased with this opportunity to be here…
We already met Bill VK4FW and Lord Howe’s resident - VK9FLHI. We are staying at two different locations on the island like 400m from each other. First masts and antennas are being organized now to be able to come up on the air tonight local time at least on 2-3 bands. Here are the very first pictures I took on the Lord Howe Isl. today. Once I get our band/operators’ roster, I’ll post an update. Stay tuned as there probably more to come tonight yet!

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73 and hear you on the bands soon! Stan SQ8X

Sydney!

After 48 hours and quite complicated connections we have arrived at Sydney! Our flight from Heathrow was delayed 3 hours and that caused a series of other complications. In Singapore nobody made it on time to get connections to Perth, Sydney and Brisbane. Some of the passangers had to stay in a hotel at the airport to get their plane next day. Fortunately we get the plane to Melbourne, where after almost 10 hours of flight we caught, by a chance, a connection to Sydney. What is good in this story is that we are jet lagged a little bit less and we feel pretty good as for that hours. In Sydney it’s +27 degrees centigrade and high humidity. There is part of the VK9LA team in our hotel: Tony IZ3ESV with Maddalena, Chris Vk3QB, San K5YY. We are going for dinner in couple of minutes. Tomorrow at 11:50 LCT we depart to Lord Howe Island!

First pictures taken in London, during the flight and at Ibis hotel, Sydney

Delay…

Hi there

We are stuck at Heathrow due to some technical issues with our plane, they announced PA problems which are greek to us (sri Vicky hiii). Hope this delay won’t affect our stopover in Singapore where we must change planes to Sydney…

We’re doing fine, however it’s pretty late here and some of us will need some sleep soon. Hope this will happen in the plane, not on the waiting room’s floor. All seats are occupied hiii.

We’ll keep you posted once we’ll have another chance to get online. Otherwise we’ll use our tiny twitter option in the right hand.

Stan, Pete, Kasia & Vicky