Archive - March 2017

9N7EI Qsl Card

9N7EI 1

The Qsl design for 9N7EI has now been completed and cards are currently being printed by UX5UO.

We have a really nice 4 sided (Folding) Card which will be sent to all who have made a donation
or requested a Direct Card via OQRS or Post Mail. A 2 sided card has also been produced which
will be sent to all those requesting a Bureau Card.

Thanks to Gennady UX5UO for the printing of the card, showing several aspects of our trip to
Nepal.

The EIDX Group hope you will like the card once received, thank you.

 

9N7EI 2 3

9N7EI single ob

Logsearch is now on Clublog and our OQRS pages are now open. 

The 12 man, all Echo India team brought a wealth of experience and variety to the group. Several are well known and active contesters while others are world recognised DXpeditioners.

Each one of them love pile-ups, and tried their best to get as many into the log as possible finishing with just over 30,000 qso’s.

QSL via M0OXO OQRS or Direct Post Mail

 

9N7EI 4

 

D44TWO & 9X2AW

D44TWO-QSL

Harald DF2WO (XT2AW, 9X2AW, D44TWO) will be back in Cabo Verde and Rwanda again soon.

Harald will be going back to Santiago Island AF-005 from the 3rd May until 08th June 2017 and will operate again as D44TWO. He enjoyed his recent trip to Kigali so much that he will be back in Rwanda from 15th – 30th November 2017.

He will operate as he normally does with Hexbeam and vertical antennas on most bands 80 thro to 6m, bands permitting. More information will be released nearer the time.

 

 

9G5X QSL Cards

9G5X crop

Qsl cards for the recent 9G5X trip to Ghana are now being issued.

The next batch of cards will be mailed on Friday 24th March 2017.

Please use OQRS, it is the fastest route possible.

QSL via M0OXO OQRS or Direct Post Mail

 

 

 

 

 

9X2AW QSL Cards

Gorilla

The Qsl Cards for 9X2AW have arrived.

The cards for the recent trip to Rwanda by Harald (DF2WO) are being processed and will be mailed Friday 24th March 2017.

QSL via M0OXO OQRS or Direct Post Mail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9G5X – Final Day

9G5X antennas2

The Crew here at 9G5X are starting to wrap up for our last day here in Ghana. The 5 Band Spiderbeam and 12m mast in the garden area was taken down this afternoon, leaving the HF beams on the roof and our LF aerials.

Tonight (Monday) evening we had the most enormous thunderstorm with torrential rain and the heavy QRN to go with it. Bob, 5B4AGN is doing his best on LF, but sadly 160 and 80m are almost unusable because of QRN. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about conditions.

The low band aerials are coming down early Tuesday at first light, but we will be on tomorrow (Tuesday) until about 13z, using the remaining two beams on the roof. At about 14z we all start to take down the rest our HF aerials and pack up for the red-eye flight leaving Accra for London Heathrow at 23:00z.

It has been great fun working all you guys from down here at Aburi, north of Accra. This place is an outstanding radio QTH and we’ve had the run of the garden and the hotel roof for aerials. The only downside has been the regular power outages, which have plagued us from time-to-time.

Sweet Mother Eco Lodge isn’t Five Star, but our hosts have been very accommodating and, of course, we’ve had a great time running the pile-ups and working all you guys. For future 9G operations, this is a good place for a radio DXpedition with ham friendly owners. The food and the accommodation are only just adequate, but for two weeks, we’ve managed very well. The locals Ghanaians are lovely folks, who are convinced that we are all certified, but still treat us as valued guests.

Sure, there are things we could have done better, but this was a holiday DXpedition and we took no donations or requested donations. It was all pretty laid back and a lot of fun. What you see is what you get, and we hope you managed at least one 9G5X QSO. Charles M0OXO has done a great job getting logs into Clublog and on to LoTW. If you have logging queries, we’ll do our best to help, if you drop Charles an email.

Can I say that in our experience, some of the very loud Italians using code readers on CW made working them slow and difficult. There are, without doubt, some top-line Italian ops, but only a few. Working the guys with code readers is a nightmare, requiring us to repeat the exchange and their call multiple times.

The best way to work us, is to call once, then listen, if no response then call once again, then listen. One call only is best, then listen. Don’t all call up 1, but spread out up to say +1 to +3 on CW and. Up to 15 kHz on SSB. Again, call just once then listen and don’t leave a huge time gap with no repeat of your call. We hear summat like “SVD” as we tune over the pile up. It could be Andy or an IK6, but then often we hear nothing for ages. Drop your in call regularly, maybe every 2 seconds, but only once, but time it right!

We really don’t care if you are in MI or FL or Aberystwyth, and we don’t need your name or QTH or inside leg measurement. Once we have your call, we don’t need it repeating four times plus 73 and best DX. Just “599 TU” is good, if you are sure that we have your callsign logged correctly.

The number of casual dupes has shocked us and sometimes yesterday when I was on 17m CW in the late afternoon maybe three out of ten QSOs were duplicates. None of us get this. Clublog tells you which band and mode you’ve worked us, so why keep calling us?

Enough of our thoughts. We just hope we’ve given some of you a new bandslot or mode from Ghana. The pile ups here have been insane, but great fun to run. RTTY was a blast on 18 MHz yesterday with many Gs worked whilst the RDX contest was ongoing. We decided to stick to just one band for RTTY to avoid working the same big hitters over and over again. Quite a few people managed a new one on RTTY with our single band strategy. Of course, others bugged us constantly for other bands.

We have about 29K QSOs in the log up to now. We are not trying to beat other scores since this is a group of only six guys working the radios part-time. Some of the guys have been sight-seeing and enjoying the radio only when they can or when they feel like it. We didn’t have strict shift rotas here, it is was all very free and easy.

We’ve had a fabulous time with a lot of laughs at some of our (bad) habits and frailties, which is about what you would expect from a group of known reprobates. Thank you for the great QSOs and the fine operating skills exhibited by G and EI operators, who to us were among the best. You are all a credit to the hobby.

73 until next time.

Steve Wilson, G3VMW for the 9G5X crew.

A7 QSL Cards

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Cards are now in stock for the following stations from Qatar;
 

A70X (AS-088), A71A, A71AM, A71EM, A71RCAR, A71SS, A71YY & A73A.
 

Please use OQRS or Direct mail on the link below for QSLCard requests.
 
If you find any qso not in the logsearch, please use the ”Busted/Missing Call” form on the OQRS page to report it. Please do not send reports via email –
Thank you.

 

9N7EI Update

Nepal1

March 16th, 2017

Just reached 20,000 QSOs so big celebrations! Over 50% of our QSOs are uniques and 125 DXCCs now owrked. We are QRV on all bands from 160m to 10m, and are running 4 stations during peak times. Band conditions are poor however, so mostly only 2 bands are open at any one time.

We are still trying hard to work our North American friends……signals are very small. Remember, try to call in the clear and spread out…you will have a better chance to get in the log!

20m only opens for around 10 hours a day, and we are still experiencing regular power outages. Infact earlier today, we were on generator power for 6 hours.

All team members are meshing incredibly well together, we all have the same goal. We are now entering our final days of operating….and the team spirit is still high.

Next update on Friday….tomorrow is St.Patrick’s Day…..Nepali style

 

A25UK Update

a25red

NEWS UPDATE by G0VJG.

The website will be fully running by tomorrow with our info. Due to solar minimum we have published some operating frequencies so people know where to expect us. The journey is long so we expect to be on site and on the air late evening Tuesday 25th April.

We have gone to some lengths to favour the low bands with 4 square antennas for 30 and 40m, also verticals for 30 and 160m. We have two mobile trailer towers each with two beams for other bands.

We hope to have two stations on the air all the time but have capability and man power to run 5 stations at once.

The team is made up of 10 UK hams and ZS6JR Daniel who has supplied the logistics and most of the equipment.

 

QSL via M0OXO OQRS or Direct Post Mail     See website www.a25uk.com

 

9G5X – Update

9G5X antennas2

Steve G3VMW writes;

”We had our first brief opening on 10m today and worked a lot of southern EU stations, but propagation was poor further north into EU. The only G worked was G4CCZ. 12m has been quite good at times, but the opening is here is short and at best, only for an hour or two around 12z.

160m and 80m were very good last night and Bob and I plan to be there again tonight from about 21z onwards, although I doubt we will be QRV all night. We worked a couple of ZLs on 80m this morning at around 06:15z, and 80m might be a good bet for the ZLs needing 9G. G signals generally are really good on all bands with us, but the pile-ups are still quite heavy. However, we do have our G ears turned on, and recognise many of the the calls of our G colleagues calling in the pile-ups.We plan to try some RTTY tomorrow, probably on 20m to start with. Over the weekend we will be on RTTY and WARC bands, away from the contest activity.

Some of the guys have gone off to look at the old slave forts along the Cape Coast at Elmina today, so we are down to only three ops. We are still troubled with our KAT-500 amplifiers tripping out, either from RF or low volts. This is despite the big voltage regulator we’ve borrowed to stabilize the mains volts, which often drops to 190 volts. We are also experiencing daily power outages and although there is a standby generator here, changeover is not automatic, and very slow.

All of us were delighted with Iain M0PCB’s effort in the Commonwealth Contest, despite poor conditions. A great way to celebrate his 32nd birthday.

This is a fabulous site for radio, high in the hills above Accra, but has very basic accommodation and is still very much work in progress. We have had to put the good resources of Mr. Fred, G4BWP to procure some decent food locally for the cook here to prepare. However, our Dutch host has been very generous in allowing us to rig our many aerials all over the hotel roof and in the grounds. Finally, we are being constantly troubled by people making duplicate QSOs. Thankfully, not our G friends, but there seems to be a hardcore of EU stations who feel the need to crack the 9G5X pile-up every day, just because they can. It is very annoying!

Thanks for all the QSOs so far and especially to Charles M0OXO for his good work uploading our logs to Clublog and LoTW.

73 Steve, G3VMW” QSL via M0OXO OQRS or Direct Post Mail.

 

9X2AW QRT

Gorilla

Latest log received from Harald in Rwanda and uploaded to M0OXO Logsearch & OQRS.

Harald will be dismantling his station today (Saturday 11th) and leave for home on Sunday. He will return to Kigali in November.

QSL via M0OXO OQRS or Direct Post Mail.