C21HA Nauru
10 January - 06 February 2012
We had two focuses on our announced January/February 2012 South Pacific DX Tour: T2 and T30 with possible operation from T33. We are regret to advice that we had to cancel the operation from T2 and T30. That was the bad news.
The good one is that our new target is C2, Nauru.
We have finished the antennas and station installation and started the operation on 12 01 at 00:50 UTC. Unfortunately the SteppIR BigIR motor gone during the transportation from the antenna bag. We set up an inverted L antenna for the second station.
The first week went away of our 4 weeks activation of Nauru. The antennas in the sea need daily maintenance. The sea is very rough and destructive. The high tide is cc. 2 meters with 1-1.5 meter high very strong waves. We can do the maintenance during the low tide, at noon.
Yesterday there was a nice opening to EU on the 14 and 17 meters bands. This morning we could log cc 500 NA and SA stations on 10 meter. CT and EA stations have reported that they could hear our signals on 12 meter around 22-23 UTC, but they could not get trough in the massive NA pile-up.
I want to share my worst experience I ever had during my 40 years of ham radio operation.
This morning, between 20-21 UTC we were working with State side on 12 meters band. 1 kHz below of our QRG someone was also making QSOs in our pile-up using and identifying himself with our C21HA call sign. We know that there are police stations, we know that tuning on the DX QRG can happen, we know that sometime there is interference on the frequency.
There are pirate operations, time by time, using our C21HA callsign. We will report it here, as soon as we recognize or we get the information.
Beyond the half of our operating time the QSO number exceeding the 16 kQSO. Unfortunately the Solar radiation storms resulting significantly increased proton flux and very high Ap index which does not help us.
Last night on the 80 meter was less noisy making it possible to hear the stations from State side. However there was stormy weather which caused some minor damages on the antenna system in the time of 80 meter NA operation.
Yesterday morning (UTC) there was a nice, but very short opening to EU on 15 meters band. The band was open for 20 minutes only, but we could log several EU stations.
On the 24th day of our operation we exceeded the 30 kQSO. There are 30302 QSO in the log. During the last 3-4 days we were able to work on the top band.
After 26 days of operation C21HA went QRT at 00:15 UTC 07 February. The "two back-packers single station show" is over from Nauru. There are 32392 QSOs in the log from 160 DXCC entities. Detailed statistical information available on the log search page. The log has been uploaded to the LotW, as well. The OQRS service is now opened and available at the on-line logsearch page.
QSL manager, HA5AO Pista.
The QSL cards for the principal individual sponsors and the first huge batch of QSL cards for the request we received by OQRS system, were posted yesterday. The QSL cards have also been sent to the sponsor DX Clubs to forward to their members. Now, our QSL manager continue to process the direct requests were received by post. We uploaded the log to the LotW from Nauru. By now, more than 45 % of the total QSOs were confirmed via LotW. We could submit our application for the Mix and CW DXCC Award via LotW only. There are 4 confirmation missing for the WAS Triple Play Award, 3 RTTY (DE, SD, VT) and 1 SSB (DE). We do hope to receive these confirmations, soon.
C21HA 20 m CW 23 01 2012 (TNX Tomi HA5PT)
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