Archive - November 2024

VK6GWX Australia

28th November 2024
Sands (VU2WXW, VK9WX) is currently starting a deployment at the Giles Weather Station in Western Australia and will operate as VK6GWX.
 
Giles Weather Station (also referred to as Giles Meteorological Station or Giles) is located in Western Australia near the Northern Territory border, about 750 kilometres (470 mi) west-south-west of Alice Springs and 330 kilometres (210 mi) west of Uluru.
 
It is the only staffed weather station within an area of about 2,500,000 square kilometres (970,000 sq mi) and is situated mid-continent and near the core of the subtropical jetstream.
This means it plays an important role as a weather and climate observatory for the country, particularly eastern and southeastern Australia, and particularly for rainfall predictions.
 
The station is on the Great Central Road and the nearest township is the Warakurna Aboriginal settlement (population 180), 5 kilometres (3 mi) North. Giles is within the Shire of Ngaanyatjarraku and is in the foothills of the Rawlinson Ranges.

HD8CW & HC5CW/8 Galapagos Islands

17th November 2024
Edgar (HC5CW) will arrive on San Cristobal Island, Galapagos Islands (IOTA SA-004) tomorrow (Monday 18th November) and will be QRV as HD8CW. He will also take part in CQWW CW as HC5CW/8.
 
The station will feature two Hexbeam antennas for the 20 to 10 meter bands, a loop antenna for 40 and 80 meters, and will also operate on the 6-meter band. The equipment will include IC-9700 radios for satellite communications (FM and linear), IC-7300 for HF, as well as an Elecraft K3 and FlexRadios for remote operation in CW, SSB, and FT8 modes.
 
Edgar will also use antennas and tripods for Buddipole systems, two 7M Mastwerks System (2) and Buddihex Antennas (2) (see link below).
 
 
Qsl via M0OXO OQRS

3D2Y Rotuma

15th November 2024
Noa’ia from Rotuma!
 
Yesterday on Friday 15th November 2024, we woke up at 4am to depart Fiji bound for Rotuma. We arrived in Rotuma approximately 10:00 local time. Greeted by our host we made the short drive to our QTH where we participated in Mamassa, a traditional ceremony which welcomes us to the island. Soon after we got to work on the station.
The weather here is hot, which makes working during the middle of the day very challenging.  Nevertheless, we’ve been able to make extraordinary progress on the station build in a short amount of time. We spent some time organising the equipment, staging antennas and building the shack on the inside, and by 15:00 local time we were on air with one of our NexGen RiB’s, shortly followed by two local stations on 15m and 12m. We immediately made a number of test QSOs, experiencing our first Rotuma pile ups. During our testing phase we became aware of some issues with the live log uploads which we are addressing and you can expect to see this issue corrected by tomorrow.

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3B8M Mauritius

15th November 2024

3B8M will again be active M/M in CQWWCW 2024. Team in 2024 will include G0CKV (3B8HA), KX7M, 4O3A, 3B8GL, E70A, SM0CXU, YL3JA, YL2KL, YT1HA, YT7KM, YU6DX, YU9DX.

Kazu, M0CFW (JK3GAD) will in 2024 again be 3B9KW for a SOAB entry.

This is a field-day style operation. All antennas and stations have to be erected and assembled and then taken down in a few days around the contest weekend. Antennas at 3B8M are all vertical wires on Spiderbeam poles and next to the Indian Ocean with an unobstructed take-off in most directions. On 160 a toploaded vertical (umbrella) is used, on 80 an inverted-L and on 40 a vertical dipole. The 40m antenna is out in the lagoon on a rock. For 20, 15 and 10 VDAs are used and also omni vertical dipoles. Our VDAs are typically 2-element vertical dipole arrays (vertical yagis). In 2023 we also played with pairs of ‘stacked’ VDAs. We used stackmatch and control boxes from Jan at qro.cz . This allowed the operators on 20, 15 and 10 to select VDA 1, VDA 2, both VDAs or the omni vertical dipole. In 2024 we might add aluminium vertical yagis to the mix.

Noise is high on the LF bands in the tropics. Our location has low noise locally but propagated noise level is high when the bands are open. We have little space for receive antennas but as an experiment we have built a K9AY which we hope to put some 50m out on a rock in the lagoon. A receive triplexer makes the K9AY usable on 160-80-40. The K9AY setup also uses hardware from qro.cz .

In 2024 we will use a mix of K3, FTdx10 and Flex radios with SPE, Juma and PGXL amplifiers running 800W and will try some inband QSOs too.

https://www.m0oxo.com/oqrs/logsearch.php?dxcallsign=3b8m

VY0ERC Nunavut, Canada

15th November 2024
Pierre, (VE3KTB) is currently active from the Eureka Weather Station Base on Ellesmere Island, (IOTA NA-008) as VY0ERC and will remain active around work schedules until the 5th of December 2024.
 
I would expect Logs will be available after the end of the Operation but keep an eye on OQRS and this Facebook page should I receive anything sooner.