23-31
May 2010 VK9LL operation is now finished.
This
was a spare time holiday operation and as it is usual it was hard to keep a
balance between the sleepless nights at the radio and scouting round the island
during the day time with my family. At this time of the year the WX may be
quite terrible there, with some wind gusts to 80km/hr so daily (and nightly)
power outages helped to improve my sleep balance… The propagation was not
extremely good at this time of the year, and obviously the ‘no longer wanted’
status after the last megaDXpedition has left the
island, significantly reduced the pileups. 160m – the band I love - long
calling hours returned many QSOs however I felt that most of the 160m band folk
already had their stations & antennas packed for the Northern Hemisphere
summer season and only a few actually bothered to make any effort. The first evening
on 160m resulted in circa 60 JAs and a few dozens of other Australasia
stations, but very few US and European stations. Interestingly enough most of
the stations heard had good signals, indicating that the propagation (although
somewhat miserable) was there but there were not enough people to work.
Just
like in the previous YJ0CCC
and other operations, I was running barefoot, at full 100w. My belief is that
under normal propagation condx 100w and good TX
antennas is more than enough to score hundreds and thousands of 160m/ 80m QSOs.
This is based on the practical experience from my previous expeditions. VK9L is
a different story as horizon to EU, SA is blocked by mountains and operation
site is not on a salty beach. Surprisingly, the noise levels on the island were
perhaps the worst that I have experienced in any other expedition. My backyard
in Sydney city is much quieter in that respect. Playing with different RX
antennas at different locations, using external narrow band pass filters did
not help much.
Antennas
used:
160m
TX – Inverted L with 51 ground radial, 80m TX – ¼ vertical with 51 ground radial, other bands – ¼ verticals.
RX
– K9AY, also a vertical 50m perimeter loop, also a beverage to EU.
You
are welcomed to visit VK9LL photo gallery:
The
only airline that flies to VK9L has a 14 kg maximum baggage restriction.
Usually no any overweight is tolerated, therefore the setup you can deploy
depends a lot on how much you are prepared to invest on sending the gear via
sea prior to the operation. And it is always a compromise as you want to save a
few bucks for the next trip.
QSL via VK2CCC. All conventional methods are OK.
73
and CU on the air!