The only real problems that affected the operation were the never ending
electricity supply power cuts on Nauru. The government is having problems
with the islands main generator, something to do with the cooling system etc.
The Od-N-Aiwo hotel generator saved the day early in my radio operations but was
short lived due to a mechanical problem. This was quickly rectified but
was replaced with the new problem of no diesel fuel available on the island to
fuel the hotel generator!Diesel fuel is rationed on the island, as is petrol, 75% of the islands fuel vendors are closed as stock has ran out. Another problem that affected my day to day living was water rationing on the island. The island is virtually out of fresh water due to a prolonged drought with very little rain to replenish stocks. As a result the hotel only opens the fresh water to the guests for 15 minutes in the morning only, every second day! Afternoon supplies for 20 minutes were terminated in my first two days on the island due to supply problems.
End result was that I had to fill two small plastic buckets with water and use a coffee mug to stand in the shower and tip the water over me to wash. In order to conserve water I only showered every second day with a wipe over with a face cloth to supplement the non shower days!
This was the first DX operation conducted by me where all antenna's used were made in Australia. The five element beam for six was made by D & G Antenna's in Sydney as too was the 28/29MHz half wave vertical. Both worked exceptionally well with the VSWR on the 50MHz beam virtually flat!
The trap dipole used on 80-10m was made by Emtronics in Sydney and was the popular ED-52C. It's performance on 75, 40, 20, 17 and 15 meters was very good , but it somewhat lacked on 12 and 10 meters being four 'S' points loss compared to the vertical.
Overall the conduct of operators on 50MHz was very very good, especially the
JA's where I worked well over 400 individual contacts with only four, yes four,
duplicates recorded. My special appreciation goes to the JA 50MHz DXers
for their patience and good manners as propagation was very poor at times and
signals marginal at the very best.The VK/ZL team also displayed good operating manners and it was good to hear many new callsigns being recorded in the log and the "thanks for the new one" comment made it all worth the while. I was especially pleased to work the southern states of Australia with a number of VK3, 5 and VK7 stations making the 50MHz log. All states of Australia were worked with the exception of VK6, Don VK6HK was on 28.885MHz each day with fingers crossed but sadly the MUF didn't go his way.
HF activity was very much limited as I only had one transceiver on this trip so 50MHz was the priority band at all times. Sorry to those who were looking for a HF contact but failed to hear me, with power black-outs and 50MHz there was little time allocated for HF DX operating.
