February 10-20, 2012 Winter DXpedition
February 10-20, 2012 Winter DXpedition
** I support the DX Code of
Conduct **10 - 20 Feb 2012 Planned operations dates
20 Feb 2012 Had a lot of fun in the two contests, made over 100 qso's on 160 during the ARRL CW contest. Everything packed up, and had a good trip back. Very exhausted, and still with a lingering cold for a few weeks after returning.
19 Feb 2012 Contest went
well, lots of contacts and provided new multiplier for many who seemed
to be happy near the end. Worked a little on 160 when the noise
finally went down to a reasonable level. CW is not my strong
point, and my software is not as cool as the N1MM for cw
contesting. So I was not much competition to the big guns.
Except for 160 I was almost entirely search and pounce on the CQ'erz
12 Feb 2012 Big Storm, all
my antennas fell down last night in the very high wind and snow.
Back out in the weather to put them back up, but caught bad
cold/headache in the process, Took a lot of advil, but
still not feeling all that good, struggle to get back to the rig and
operate, but I have to remember that I am not at home, and there will
be only a few tomorrows here, so operate while I can.
11 Feb 2012 Everything
is going great. I am working in the WPX RTTY contest this
weekend, and looking for some new countries to increase my dxcc count
from here. After the snow/ice storm took my big dipole down, I
spent yesterday getting everything back up and working, and finished as
it was going dark. The antennas are right on the beach, and I
have a clear view east and west so I hope to have a good score from
here. WX is cloudy today and it looks like it might rain/snow
again. FP5CJ has gone back to St. Pierre now, but advised me that
high wind is also expected to reach 50Knots later tonight.
What a beautiful place this is, with the wind, snow and the surf
rolling in on the beach in winter. The Miquelon Motel is serving
great food with even room service during the contest so I do not have
to break a pile up to eat. I can watch the antennas blowing in
the breeze from the window in my room. What a great place for DXpeditions.
Well the wind is building
this evening, and I am finding that I made a mistake in the low
frequency dipoles leaving the balun terminals exposed (I should have
taped them). In this high wind they are banging against the metal
mast I am using to hold it up with. Everytime it bangs the metal,
I get a momentary high SWR in the shack, and the solid state amp does
not like it, and kicks the protection circutry and I lose transmit
power. So I have resorted to operating low power with the
exciter, but I can only run it at 30-50 watts or it overheats while
running RTTY. I am still making contacts by search and pounce
with the loud stations, so life is still good here on Miquelon, but it
does make it hard to hand out multipliers at night. I wonder what
people think when they see my signal breaking up like it is.
Patricia, the Motel manager, antenna helper, and chief cook, made a
fabulousegg and potato omlet along with green beans for dinner this evening, very healthy and yummy during the contest.
9 Feb 2012 We arrived on
Miquelon Island from St. Pierre this morning, and spent the day getting
the antennas up in the air. We did some testing this evening, and
it looks like everything is working so far. However as evening
approached, the skies got darker and darker with storm clouds. As
we departed the ham shack for dinner, it began snowing, and now at 11Pm
is snowing pretty hard. They are predicting a couple feet by
tomorrow. Jean Pierre got his antennas up in rapid time, although
we did find a couple runs of coax that seem to have a short in them
somewhere. He was spotted around the world on the dx clusters
when he came up on SSB. We will be ready to start tomorrow
morning right on schedule. Even with a big snow storm raging
around us.
6
Feb 2012 Departure is in two days, and everything is ready.
The travel to St Pierre will take close to 18 hours, even though
it is not that far away, the travel connections are not very good.
And once arriving on St Pierre, I will have to spend the first
night there, and try to catch the morning or afternoon flight over to
Miquelon Island. If the Weather is to bad for the airplane to fly
on Thursday, I will plan on catching the Ferry over on Friday monring.
A Friday arrival will not leave much time to get the antennas up
before the WPX contest starts, so I am hoping the weather stays nice,
at least until the antennas are up, then let it blow cold and wet.
Local Time Zone is GMT minus 2 hours
Current
weather
Icom
IC-7000 (50 W)
Tokyo
Hy-Power 1.1K Amp (~300W)
LDG
AT-600Pro Antenna Tuner
Ubuntu laptop with Fldigi (Thanks Dave W1HKJ)
Granite State Antennas Ultralite Senior 160-10 Dipole
SteppIR Vertical (Thanks Roger G3SXW and Nigel G3TXF ) – 40M through 10M
QSL updates will be uploaded nightly to Logbook of the World
If
you have not signed up for LOTW yet go here, it is easy LOTW Signup
Other
alternatives are;
Direct
to home call.
Please include self addressed envelope with $2 for return postage
OQRS through Club Log
Buro to W6HGF.
eQSL.cc - Please make sure your logged time is very accurate, so I can verify QSL. eQSL is my last priority, however thanks to a new option in Fldigi, I will try to update eQSL on each log entry. We will see how that works in practice, and if not, then I will take care of after all the above are finished.
--
As in other modes, RTTY is sometimes prone to call sign errors, so if
you think you worked me, but can not find it in the log, please drop me
an email, so I can research and fix. I know I make lots of
mistakes, but I do want to fix the ones you let me know about if I can.
I have a running transcript of all rx and tx from the station
(except for SSB) and can go back in time and see what happened.
My Log will also be uploaded to Clublog each time I upload to LOTW
.
QSL Direct Address:
| W6GHF Al Danis P.O. Box 220164 Chantilly, VA 20153-0164 USA |
Saint
Pierre & Miquelon tourism web site
Saint
Pierre & Miquelon information web
Cheznoo.net
– includes webcams
Last page update - 7 Jun 2012