here is some info about t9 expedition

During the Hamfest in Friedrichhafen in 1998 we asked the hamradio organization of Bosnia and Herzegovina about the possibilities there were. They told us about the situation in their country and that there wouldn't be any problem. Around Christmas 1998 we decided to get serious and started the whole operation.

By this time T9 was added to our CEPT license , but both of us applied for a special T9 callsign. Next we tried to get in touch with T9 hams who could help us , but unfortunately nil here. The fact that we wanted to operate from JN84 ( a most wanted square) made it not much easier. In February we decided to check the location first and we drove down to Bosnia and Herzegovina. After 1 day of searching with the GPS receiver we found a good VHF location (JN84ax), but no hotel of any accommodation around. Finally we found someone who spoke German and promised us he could arrange a room in any house we wanted. After exchanging phonenumbers we did set up a small station (ic706 + 150W PA + 10el) in the snow (1-2M) and made some radio contacts with 9A,DL and I. Due to the clouds and heavy snowfall we couldn't see how the takeoff was but it felt good to us.

Back in Holland there was a lot of work to do. Antennas has to be build , a portable crankup tower too, and some public relation work. The antennasytem must not be too big so we did choose for the 10el 3wl opt DJ9BV design. The same antenna Chris used in EA6 last year with good results. Lionel VE7BQH and Rainer DJ9BV helped us here. The result was a very light H/V switchable portable EME antenna system.

In the meantime Lionel was handling all the EME skeds and Jurgen the MS skeds. Our daily freetime became limited. When there was Moonset we had to prepare for Meteorscatter and when we finished MS there was Moonrise. The time 1600z - 1800z was sacred , we needed time for rest and to eat.The final skedlist for EME counted 70 stations for MS counted 67 stations, and some troposkeds were made.

All the radiostuff was ready by the beginning of April , and now we were thinking about how to get food, because we hadn't time for shopping in Bosnia. At this point Monique (Chris YL) helped us a lot. She arranged a microwave and prepared food we could heat up easily.We were not sure about the powersource over there so we had to buy a powergenerator( 3000W) . By the end we were really thinking of going with 2 cars. Fortunately we got all the stuff in 1 Chrysler Voyager.

This is a list what we had with us:4x 10el xyagi, stacking frame, kr400 rotator, kr500 elevation rotator,H2000 phasing line, 1/2" feedline,6m cranckup tower,2x ts850, 2x ic706, ft 847,2x dspfilter , 3x powersupply, 1 preamp with all the relays for tx/rx and h/v,3x spare preamps,memorykeyer, bencherpaddle,2x DTR,2x laptop for MS,Moontracking and FFTDSP ,microwave,food,tools,sparepart,heater,packetradiostation, 70cm preamp,70cm antenna,70cm amplifier,several meters of coax cable, 2x 2m PA,2x transverter,licences, logging stuff,cameras,GSM phone with Inet access, 20m dipole,etc...........

The main plan of us was to work with 2 stations. After the LT2s transverter rx side we made a splitter so we could feed 2 ts850's with the 28mhz signal.When one was working and listening on the sked frequency the other one could listen on the random frequencies. This was a great advantage for us. On the main transceiver we connected a ic706 on the IF output(8.83Mhz) the ic 706 was connected to the laptop with the FFTDSP program of AF9Y. The advantage of this: the FFTDSP program is getting a NOT filtered signal ,and on the TS850 and the timewave 59+ you can set the filter as small/wide you want without any affection on you FFT analyze. You can see on the FFT screen IF there is someone replying on your call and WHERE.
 

We left Holland mondaymorning with a loaded car heading for our destination Donja Koprivna in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first night we stayed in a hotel in Graz ,Austria. The second day we arrived at our destination just after noon. Our contact in Bosnia didn't arrange the room we wanted, he had a room at his brothers place (lowest part of the village)for us. At this QTH there were no possibilities for a VHF expedition , so we were thinking of moving out of town to find a good alternative. Finally we decided to build up the station on the hilltop in the village and to use the car as a shack. 15:00 local we started to build up the the tower and antennasystem and before it was dark a lot of work was done. Next day 21/4/99  we finished everything and at 12:00 local the station was running. As promised we called Peter PA0PVW for a troposked. But no qso at that time only a lot of firework by MS bursts. At 13:14 we had the first station in our log , S51DX via tropo. The whole station was running very well and we did some echotest. With 100W we had a good copy of our signal from the moon. We only had some doubt about the vertical part of the system. the first random qso's we made were SM5BSZ and OZ1HNE on the 21st. Everything was on schedule. We closed down the station that afternoon and went back to the room for some food and sleep. The skedlist was starting at 0200 22/4/99 with a MS sked with LY2MW and from that point the MS sked and EME sked would slide into each other. So in the middle of the nite we went up the hill again with the CAR/SHACK and connected all the cables to the station again. This wasn't the the easiest way but we couldn't leave the car with all the equipment alone. Only when there was a small time gap between the MS and EME sked ,one of us slept in the car for 2-3 hours. When there was a longer time (later in the week) we disconnected the station and slept both in the guesthouse.

After a couple of days we figured out that we had terrible qrm from 2000-0100 Z due to the jamming activity of the AWAC airplanes in the Balkan War. Sorry for those stations who has skeds during these times. Fortunate most station who had a sked did call us on random when they heard us.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT DURING A EXPEDITION!!! DON'T WAIT UNTIL YOUR SKEDTIME SHOWS UP!!! TRY TO WORK THE STATION ASAP ON RANDOM FREQUENCY!! AND SPREAD OUT ON THE RANDOM FREQUENCIES!!!

During the first week the EME skedlist changed a lot. Thanks to Lionel VE7BQH for sending updates by Email to us. Our Inet connection with the mobile phone worked perfect. The Dutch provider told us that it wasn't possible to transfer data on the GSM network in Bosnia, and that there was no roaming service for data. But as real radioamateurs we just tried it and all worked OK for us.
We were glad we had a spare PA for 2m with us (thanks John ,PE1OGF) in the morning of the 26th during a random MS QSO with DL3YEL the Discovery PA failed. Both capacitors in the anode line were gone. This was all because we couldn't load the PA proper. The Discovery PA is going very fast into tripping because RF feedback to the input circuit ( missing screenring with fingerstock to ground) . If we have a good socket for the 3CX800 it is possible to get some output during our next expedition!! Who can help Chris with a complete socket for his PA? please mail to PA2CHR [email protected] he would be very pleased with it. After changing the PA's everything was working fine again.

Via Lionel we got a request of DL9KR for a EME test on 432Mhz with moonrise. Unfortunate we lost the sked because we didn't get the skedinfo exchanged on time. During this experiment we lost a powersupply (tx-ing on 144 and 432 at the same time was too much for it) When you are tired you not as keen on it anymore... After putting up the 70cm station we made some qso's on OSCAR 10 .For the OSCAR we only had a 10el H yagi and 80W.

The activity on the OSCAR 10 was very surprising, many station called us and we had some nice pile-ups. T9 is rare on the OSCAR too.

The overall results on 144Mhz were in 12 days 646 qso's ( EME LIST, MSLIST rest tropo and oscar10)

Chris and I really enjoyed our trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina and we learned a lot about how to prepare a expedition. we are already thinking about the next one. If you have some suggestions please sent your list to:

[email protected]

Best 73's PA2CHR (T98CHR) Chris , PE1LWT (T98LWT) Jurgen
more pictures at picture gallery of T9 expedition