Hello VHF-Friends!

After some weeks of relaxing, it is time to tell a bit more about my activity from OJ0, Market Reef.

First of all I have to say thanks to Markus (DL1IAN), Stefan (DL6GV) and Peter (DL5IO) for organizing this expedition. When I joined the group in March nearly everthing was prepared regarding all the permits and so I could concentrate on assembling a suitable station for 144 Mc.

I decided to stick to the same rig which I used in the previous years (FT757GXII, LT2S, Nagai 144XL) and a new 10el. Yagi from WIMO. My IC706, a Dressler D2s and my old 13el. F9FT was the backup rig in case of any problems with the transverter system. Also I had 2 DTR's with me (thank to Dithmar, DF7KF for the 2nd). But when I saw the pictures from the reef I get a bit puzzled about where to put a 10el. Yagi on all these rocks? So I bought a long wire (20m Aircom) and Ralf, DH3IAJ lent me his Pre-Amp (thanks Ralf) to hopefully overcome this problem.

Everything exept the antennas and my pillow was packed into 4 big boxes and we started from here (JO41EV) at 01:30 on May, 29th. We arrived at Grisslehamm (SM3) after a long ride through Sweden with a lot of rain, just before the last ferry starts to Eckeroe (Aaland) for this day about 20:00. So we had a complete day to arrange averything with the coast guard and our skipper on Aaland.
The next morning we visited the coast guard at Marienhamm and received the keys for all buildings on Market Reef, but when we asked for some details about the diesel generator from the coast guard there, the lady phoned someone who was operating the lighthouse years before.
It was OH0..(censored). He told us that the generator is his property now and gave us absolutly no permit to use it or anything else of his stuff there. Hmmm, what a surprise....
The people from the coast guard didn't agree to that, but on the other hand we had no intention to wait until this is cleared and deceided to look for another generator. After some hours, kilometers and phone-calls we borough a 2kw petrol generator for a resonable price.

After picking up 200l in petrol can's (200l diesel were still on our boat...) we met the crew of SK3SN who had their anual fieldday on Aaland exactly on that weekend (thanks to Einar, SM3MXR for the invitation). It was a pleasant stay in a bungalow camp with barbeque, sauna and some beers before we went to bed very early.

The night ended at 04:00 and 90 minutes later a fishing boat with 4 crazy hams on board left Eckeroe harbour, course Market Reef!
2 hours later the first of us (more or less in a good condition, hi) put his feet on Market Reef. The rest of the crew had to pack all material into a small dingi, because it was not possible to reach the reef with teh fishing boat directly. Several turns were needed to get about 1000kg ashore.

The rest of the day we were busy with building up 2 shortwave stations with 4 antennas, 2m and 6m equipment. The 2m and 6m antenna found their place on the top of the "generator building" (the middle of the 3) where we found a mast from an earlier expedition, maybe. The VHF-Shack was in the basement of the lighthouse, sw found their place in the 1st floor and in the early evening all bands were ready to go.
I was doing only a little bit of tropo this evening, just to say that OJ0 is on the air.

A great disadvantage were the very low temperatures on Market Reef due to the still cold Baltic Sea. In the shack it was always between 8-10 degrees, making it very difficult to climb out of the warm sleeping-bag even with the sun looking through the window every morning at 02:00 UTC!
So it was a bit late next morning, but after the 1st CQ on 144.147, DL5MAE was there with good reflections (as usual). The next cq's ended up in really a wall of reflections. I learn to concentrate only on longer reflections and when the caller sends only one time the report together with a roger-report making the qso's very fast.
The reflections remains good until 10:00 UTC and after a short break they came up again at 14:00z until 16:00z all day.
I made some tropo qso during the evening, but then I went to bed to recover for the next day of random operation.

The next morning I found the generator off, hmmm... obviously bad condx on the low bands I thought and tried to start it... and tried... and tried... NOTHING! I checked fuel level, installed a new spark, but still no chance. I checked the spark again and found it dry... after so many tries... big problem. When I was searching for some more tools, Peter (DL5IO) woke up and together we were disassembling the carburet system and the tank. Also Markus joined us and after cleaning and reassembling all parts, we still had 1 screw and some nuts in our box left.. hmmm..that's the way it is we thought and after some tries the generator started and OJ0 was back in business! Time for a beer! (and thanks to Peter for his good job. the generator was running until the end of the expedition without any problems). Maybe because we passed the rest of the fuel through coffee filters...

I lost 4 hours due to this problem and deceided to work as long as possible at this day on random.
In the afternoon I tried to get access to one of the shortwave stations to show up in the vhf-net, but had huge pile-up's on all bands. This together with the high qso rate on random gave me the kick to stay on random operation and so I worked again 22 stations on random on June, 3rd.

In the evening there was the NAC contest where I really wanted to participate, but 2 h before the contest I found a lot of qrm on nearly all frequencies on 2m. The meter was always between S3 to S5 making it rather difficult to listen to weak signals. Obviously the noise was coming from a remote camera of the coast guard which is installed on top of the building (see picture's of Market Reef). I managed a sked with LA0BY, but all directions to the south were not possible. I called 3 OZ stations, but even with cw I've got no reply from them.

The next morning the qrm was still there and so I could not complee a sked with IW1AZJ, but 45 min. later the band went "quite" again. Very strange... In the next our I worked the odx of this expedition: F/G8MBI in JN04FT about 2130km on sked.
I was running 2 more skeds around noon, but the reflections went really down and so I made qrt for a while. When I called again cq on 144.147 I heard no reply for 45 min. and so 12 qso's was the score on June, 4th.

The next morning started with very good reflections and at 05:05z I heard a high speed cw signal coming up from the noise. In the next period it was strong enough to be decoded:
G0JUR on tropo!! I called him in slow speed and we exchanged 539 reports: 1441km!! After this I called again in slow speed several times and later also on 144.300, but the only dx-station that could be worked was DL3LBK from JO54. At the same time G0JUR was heard again working SM7BOU and 15 min. later I continued with meteorscatter.
At 07:04z I heard S53VV calling me with 27 report and I quickly changed my keying from
rrrcq to 27 report. When I switched back to rx I heard a strong signal on my qrg. First I was a bit puzzled about this strange procedure, but then I decoded the signal: S53VV peaking S7!!
ES!! We exchanged 57 reports in the next period in ssb and in the next 55 minutes I managed to work 27 stations via ES from S5, 9A, I, OE and south DL. Sometimes I was calling "cq" for 5 minutes without any reply, but scanning the band I didn't find more stations and so I decided to continue with "cq". The last station via ES was IZ2AAJ at 08:09z. I was carefully checking the band for more openings, but even 6m went quiet in the afternoon.

Friday, 6th of June was our last day on Market Reef and so I was looking for some more MS-QSO's this day. Our return boat was scheduled for 08:00z and I wanted to close the station at 05:00z as we had to bring down the complete mast with the 2m+6m antennas, but the reflections this morning were really outstanding and I was doing such a high qso-rate that I could not push the "big-button". At 05:27z I heard a 5 sec. burst from IW5AVM and 15 minutes later the qso was complete: 2030km on random. The last station I worked was DK4TG, because I heard him many times before with good reflections. At 06:02z I switched off the pa...

I quickly started disassembling the station where the shortwave guys were still ready to go.
30 minutes after my qrt our return boat appeared at the horizon too early and so Peter, Markus and Stefan had to help with the antenna system.
Nothing was left on the reef exept a note in the guestbook and our QSL-Cards in the "gallery" and at 08:15z the boat left Market Reef with 4 tired (but still crazy) hams on board.
The sea was quite calm on this day and so the fishes missed their brunch this time. But I wonder that the skipper switched off the autopilot and reduced the speed several times. Then I saw the reason: 50m beside the boat the colour of the sea changed from deep blue to light green! "About 1.5m waterdepth. A bit tricky here" our skipper said...

Finally I want to say thanks to Jan-Ole who organized the boat trip and also thanks to our skipper with his (homemade) boat "Tara". The both helped us a lot loading all the material on and off the boat and the island.

It also was a lot of fun for us and we are now looking for some more trips in the future.

Vy 73 from the Market Reef team
Ulli, DL3YEL