3A expedition during leonid meteor shower
( and some small EME experiments)
by PA2CHR and PE1LWT
Chris , PA2CHR and I PE1LWT didn't
want to stay home during the 1999 leonid shower, because the 1998 leonids
were good , but no new dxcc or squares were worked. So with the good predictions
of the 1999 leonids we decided to go to a nice place which would be a new
dxcc for a lot of european station. The choice for 3A was a quick one ,
because we had thought about it for a EME expedition since a few years,
but the limitation of power (100W) never forced us to go to Monaco. For
a good EME expedition you need at least 600-700W output ( that is what
we had most of the time in T9).
But when the leonids were half as good as
in 1998, we could can work a lot of stations with 100W and a good antenna
for MS we thought. With the help of Lionel (VE7BQH) we builded 2 small
yagis for MS. He recommended to stack two W1JR
8 element yagi in the vertical plane. We had to make some elevation
as well to overcome the high mountains in front of us.
In the meantime we decided to bring some
EME stuff with us as well, and try to work some big guns on EME and to
check to local possibilities on EME ( noisefloor, moonwindow etc). Just
in case when in the future the power limitation will drop.
We left on mondaymorning, and in the evening
we were in our hotel in Monte Carlo . Thanks to F1JRD who gave us the address
of this nice and ham radio friendly place. It wasn't a problem to
build up the antennasystem on the roof.
The room
was shack and bedroom together, but much more convenient than we had in
Bosnia. The TS850,laptop,lt2s,ic706,PA,dsp59+,power supply and rotor control
didn't need much space. After setup the station we did some tropo test,
and all seems to work well, but no reflections yet. It took us a while
to set up the packet radio link to get access to the WWconvers channel.
We had some help from local Italian stations. Until tuesday evening no
signs of upcoming leonids shower. In the morning of the 17th we started
to call on random HSCW and we got some replies, but very weak and short
and finally we got our first MS qso complete with PE1HWO. It took us more
than a hour to complete. This wasn't a good heat up for the leonids, compare
to the 1998 leonids there were less reflection before the predicted peak.
During the peak we got only 5 SSB qso's in the Logbook.
The total amount of MS qso's is 13.
In the evening of the 18th we had a EME
with W5UN. After 30 minutes we didn't complete but we were very close to
a qso. We did receive Dave's O report and the both calls. The 2 yagis were
to small for EME with 100W. The next day we switched our antenna system
to a small EME setup ( 2 of our 3WL optbv antennas from our T9 expedition).
During the evening we started to call cq on EME, and the first station
who replied was SM5BSZ , but due to our stupidity we didn't complete with
Leif. Leif did hear our O report , but wasn't sure it was for him. We should
have sent more his callsign before start to sent the O report.
After that we completed with W5UN and KB8RQ
we heard W7GJ very well the last 10 minutes of our window,but unfortunately
no qso. Too bad we couldn't have a sked with Lionel ,VE7BQH because
we didn't had a common window. When there is no power limitation
Monaco, we are willing to set up a good EME expedition, but with only 100W
there is no chance to satisfy the whole EME community.
Chris and I are working /thinking about the next expedition. We are working on a list of most wanted countries on EME in Europe.