On Sat,1/16/2016 9:31 AM, Doug Turnbull wrote:
The propagation gods are not favouring us at all. K5P is a hard reach on most bands and once you go away from 17 through 40 meters there are literally only about five QSOs total on the other bands.
Now you know what life can be like in W6 with expeditions that are in the back yard of EU. :)
The island K5P is a protected wild life refuge, and access is quite restricted, even to the extent of the size of aircraft they could land on the island. That caused them to decide to travel light, including antennas. Rigs are K3s with KPA500s, HF antennas are SteppIR verticals. The 160 antenna is a Battle Creek special, and I suspect they have run some Beverages. BTW -- that aircraft got even smaller a day or so before they took off, causing them to trim the team by several men.
Here in NorCal, we're only 3400 miles from them over water. Sigs are great on 160M, not great on the HF bands. 160M is a lot louder than 80M. I managed to work them yesterday on 10 and 12 CW, but I had to wait several hours for them to get from "vapor" to 229 to call them (and be able to copy my call), and they never got louder than that 229.
I know about half the team, and I know they are dedicated to putting unique calls in the log, and are favoring EU as much as they can when they think there's an opening. On one of their first nights on 30M calling EU, there were EU spots saying that 10115 had bad QRM, please go to 10116. I emailed one of the guys, and the next day they were on a different frequency.
73, Jim K9YC _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
