DX-Pedition by Bob Sutton, ZL1RS

Ham Radio Photos

A 24 meter high commercial radio mast located about
70 meters from the Met Office supported my antennas.

This is the view enjoyed from the top of the mast.
It is located about 100 meters away from the 40
meter high cliff top overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

I was fortunate to have the invaluable help of Christine the Team
Leader to get my pulley and halyard to the top of the mast. Chrissy
is a qualified climbing instructor and took no risks. You can not
afford to when the nearest hospital is a $25,000 helicopter ride away!!

I'm a "vertigo whimp", so I really owe you big time Chrissy!

You can just make out the Lazy-H 4 element colinear,
phasing line, and open wire feedline against the cloudy sky.

The Lazy-H was used on 30M-10M with the aid of 2 balanced tuners.
This one tuned from 30M to 17M and was specially built for the trip.
It has motor driven variable capacitors to change bands remotely from
the Met Station shack some 70 meters away. The RG-213 is the feedline
from the shack and the RG-58 goes to the 160M Inverted-L ... see below.

The previous tuner also had a relay to select a second antenna. I used
this relay to select the 160M Inverted-L antenna. Here is the mess at the
feed point! I used a 19 meter vertical wire and a 20 meter long horizontal
wire for the Inverted-L, with the small base load inductor to set resonance
at 1828kHz. I laid out 11 long wires on top of the 1.5 meter tall grass to
make a counterpoise earth radial system.

This is the home-brew amplifier I built in a week before going to Raoul.
The tube is an 8877 with HT voltage about 2400V from a voltage doubler
supply. The transformer has a C-Core and was custom wound by Marque
Magnetics in Auckland, NZ. It also has heater and relay supply windings.

Those loading capacitors on the right are ganged together by a
chain drive using hand cut cogs. They were fun to make!!

The under-side showing the voltage doubler capacitors and rectifier board.
The relay supply and biasing components are mounted on the side of the
input compartment. Dispite only 3 short test QSO's before the trip, it
performed faultlessly in the modest total of 5200 contacts I had during
the 54 hours that I managed to find the time to operate. (Including
about 450 CW QSO's ... 400 more than I have had in the last 25 years!)

Bob, ZL8RS showing remarkable composure after
working the European pile-up on 20M SSB!!

Special thanks to:

Nils Schiffhauer and Clyde Hay-Smith for their assistance.
Richard Ayres for the use of his digital camera.
Phillip, ZL1SL for the loan of his IC-706Mk2.
Lee, ZL2AL for the loan of his laptop computor.
The JA Hams whose patience and great operating discipline
helped me through my first dx-pedition CW pile-up!

Did you work the ZL9CI expedition?

Maybe you heard their signal on 40M from the "4-Square"
antenna array I built for them using the ComTec switch box.

See the ZL9CI web site here.

73 ... Bob, ZL1RS/ZL8RS.

Bob Sutton, 207 Fergusson Drive,
Thames, NEW ZEALAND.

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