Archive - September 2012

I don’t usually post the details of my mail drops as it tends to be rather boring given the 130+ Callsigns I manage. However, quite a reasonable drop of cards went to the bureau today.

Whilst visiting the national Hamfest, I took the opportunity of passing 9 Kilo of cards today to the RSGB Bureau representative. There were cards included for most callsigns I manage from a single card to several hundred.

I also sent 1,370g of cards Direct to World Bureaus (and NOT via the RSGB) for;

4W3A, CM5FZ, CM5LV, DV1UD, DX1X, JY9ET, KH6ZU, GO4RCG, MO0OXO, GQ4RCG, MQ0OXO, PW2D, PX2C, PY2MTV, RA3CQ, V55A, VK2CZ, VK4HAM, VK4NM, VK8AA, ZD8UW and ZL7M.

Thanks for the heads up this evening from Chris G1VDP informing me about RI1ANF on 10m CW. Bellinghausen base in Antarctica wasn’t a new base for me (IOTA AN-010), I have it confirmed on other bands but Antarctica on 10M (any mode) was new so pleased to rush to the shack and log him after a few calls, thanks Chris!

The Bellinsgausen station is situated on the Filds Peninsula in the south – western part of King-George Island (Waterloo island), being a part of the South Shetland Isles. The coordinates of the station are 62° 12 S and 58° 58 W, its altitude is 16 m above sea level. The station buildings are built on free of ice soil, on the both banks of the brook, rising from the small Kiteg lake and flowing into the Ardly bay. This bay is suitable for ships visits, the disembarkation is executed usually with help of floating transport, sometimes by helicopters. The King George Island is the largest island of the archipelago (its length is about 80 km, its width is 30 km). Most of the island is covered by ice with maximal glacier thickness of 326 m.

10M continues to be good…..but for how long?

Information recieved via a colleague is that the Post Office are about to start the next stage of the withdrawal of International Reply Coupons from the UK very soon.

DP0GVN was logged this morning for my first contact with this particular German reasearch Station on Antarctica. Signals not too strong but working over the Long Path, 53 RST out and 51 RST in was all we could manage.

Situated on the Ekström Shelf Ice, Atka Bay, north-eastern Weddell Sea (Position: 70°40’S, 008°16’W, Neumayer Station III is the first research station to integrate research, operational and accommodation facilities in one building, situated on a platform above the snow surface, and connected to a garage in the snow.

Within a protective casing, the platform accommodates 100 containers with living quarters, a kitchen, a mess, a hospital, various laboratories, workshops, a radio operator room, sanitary facilities, the power supply station and a snow-melting plant. The garage underneath the platform contains storage, waste and fuel containers, as well as space for vehicles, ranging from Pistenbullies to motor sleds to a rotary snowplough.

The HARAOA president and DX’Pedition leader Tommy VK2IR has just finished construction of a 40metre, 2 element Moxon antenna – yes that’s right a two element 40 metre beam is going on the ZL9HR DX’Pedition to Campbell Island (IOTA OC-037) for the activation between November 28th. and December 9th.

The element length is 15 ½ metres long! To see the construction of this monster simply search for ZL9HR on Youtube.

The fitting out of the four shipping containers to take all the equipment has also been finished and they are being packed. All of this is on schedule to be ready to be shipped out of Sydney in just a few days around the 15th. of September.

Please refer to the web site ZL9HR.COM for the full, up to date, information about this major DX’Pedition to the Great Southern Ocean.

Curiosity is on the move across Mars — but where is it going? The car-sized rover’s path after 29 Martian days on the surface is shown on the map.

Curiosity is still almost 300 meters from its first major destination, though, a meeting of different types of terrain called Glenelg and visible on the image right. It may take Curiosity two months or so to get to Glenelg as it stops to inspect interesting rocks or landscape features along the way.

The above image was taken about one week ago from high up by the HiRise camera onboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

GO2HQ Qsl Cards received from the printer yesterday.

Cards being processed and will be in the mail next week. Apologies for the delay which was caused with processing log before submission to the IARU Contest Adjudiucators.

The European PSK Club has the honour to invite the radio amateurs all over the world to participate in the CIS DX PSK Contest 2012. The objective of the contest is to establish as many QPSK63 contacts as possible between radio amateurs around the world and radio amateurs in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Everybody can work everybody for QSO and multiplier credit.

The CIS DX PSK Contest is held every year on the third weekend of September. This year it starts at 12:00 UTC on Saturday 15th September, 2012 and ends at 12:00 UTC on Sunday 16th September, 2012.

Important changes since this year: Since 2012 we only accept logs submitted through UA9QCQ web interface at

http://ua9qcq.com/contests/submit_log_eng.php

We don’t accept logs sent via e-mail any longer!

Complete rules can be found here. Good luck to all and see you in the contest!