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.
Up to this point we have been able to put up vertical dipole antennas for 20m up to 10m, and 2x RiB antennas. These have been situated on the beach front that runs along the length of our QTH. We will be working on 160-30m and 6m antennas in the coming days, using the enormous palm trees around the property which are taller than any pole we had packed, enabling us to review our antenna options for maximum efficiency.
The commercial power here on Rotuma is provided by a generator which covers the entire district. Due to this we have to known down time which we’d like you to be aware of. At 13:00 hours local time, (01:00 UTC) we are without power for 1 hour. Rather than running a generator during this hour, we have decided to use this time as a daily maintenance window where we can focus on repairs, updates, log uploads etc.. we will also use this time to hold team discussions so we can continue to develop throughout our stay here.
The team is in good spirits and we are excited to get on air at maximum capacity as soon as we are able to.
You can see our progress, photos and real time updates by following our social media. Follow Rotuma 2024 on Facebook.
73, Jamie M0SDV,
On behalf of 3D2Y
