04/06/2016
The days are dwindling down to a precious few for the Heard Island VK0EK[1] and
Juan de Nova FT4JA[2] DXpeditions. The VK0EK crew will start packing in advance
of an April 10 planned departure. FT4JA will be on the air for 1 day longer.
The two major operations have been racking up impressive contact totals,
sometimes despite marginal conditions at times, not to mention the detrimental
effects of deliberate QRM and stations calling the DX ops simplex on their
transmit frequencies instead of operating in split mode. According to a plan
the two DXpeditions worked out in advance, VK0EK is listening down from its
transmitting frequency, while FT4JA is listening up. Some pileups have extended
10 to 15 kHz or more.
On April 5, "Amateur Radio Roundtable" host Tom Medlin, W5KUB, conducted his
third and final live interview[3] - the second live video chat - with the Heard
Island crew, speaking this time with Bill Mitchell, AE0EE. Mitchell told Medlin
that over the past weekend, conditions conspired to the point that VK0EK
operators found it tough to make contacts a lot of the time. "Other times it
opened up wonderfully," he said. Mitchell told of working a pileup while
operating RTTY, facing "a solid wall" of stations spread down the band and
finding it nearly impossible to copy any single station. Mitchell said the
VK0EK operators have been keeping a close eye on the log to single out stations
the DXpedition has not already worked. "We'd really like to get everyone we can
into the log from Heard Island," Mitchell told Medlin.
The quality of the video via satellite telephone from the sub-Antarctic island
was marginal at best due to video latency but an improvement over the previous
week's interview with DXpedition leader Bob Schmieder, KK6EK. As April 6 drew
to a close, the VK0EK operators had logged nearly 64,000 contacts - more than
47,600 of them on CW. DXers can follow the action[4] and the statistics from
Heard Island on the DXA website.
In much warmer climes off the coast of Africa, the French FT4JA team on Juan de
Nova off the coast of Africa has been enjoying similar pileups and propagation
but also has confronted high winds and very high tides - enhancing ground
conductivity - due to some stormy weather. On April 5, the Juan de Nova team
was unable to get on 160 meters because its 26 meter (85.3 foot) tall vertical
was detuned when a strong wind gust dislocated the capacity hat. FT4JA had to
take a few breaks during storms to fix various problems and to protect its
three generators. The team reported a "very noisy" 80 meter band and a lot of
lightning but they soldiered through at least for part of the night. On April
6, FT4JA reported that signals on the high bands "are not what they were last
week," and that the bands have been closing earlier.
FT4JA reached the 50,000 contact mark on April 4 and reported that operators
were trying to exploit all bands from their opening until propagation drops
out. The DXpedition also noted a lot of duplicate contacts cropping up in the
log, despite the online log[5] available through ClubLog. FT4JA has requested
that DXers not call again if they have already worked the DXpedition until they
are able to check the online log. In contrast with the chilly conditions on
Heard Island, the FT4JA team was enjoying strictly shirtsleeve (or less)
weather, with temperatures well above 50° C (122° F) inside the shelters.
[1] http://vk0ek.org/
[2] http://www.juandenovadx.com/en/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Om6D6SlKs
[4] http://dxa.vk0ek.org/
[5] http://www.juandenovadx.com/en/online-log/
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