DXpedition dates brought forward

The dates for the Magnetic Island DXpedition have been brought forward by a couple of weeks. We'll be going to a different location than last year as seen on the picture above. I'll be using a 40m dipole which will be put up in the air using the slingshot. For 10m, 15m and 20m I'll have the Spiderbeam tribander and the HF9V will be ground mounted on the rocks on a small cliff overlooking the water. All operation with be on SSB, PSK31 and RTTY (I don't do CW). I'll be operating on whatever bands are open but I'm hoping for favourable conditions to North America which seemed to suffer on last years trip. We'll arrive on April 17 and I hope to have all of the antennas up and running by mid-afternoon.

Another visit planned for April 2011

If you missed out on contacting me during the December visit you’ll have another opportunity in April. On April 29 to May 2 I’ll be having my next and final ever DXpedition to Magnetic Island. I’ll be QRV using a 10-15-20m Spiderbeam tribander, 40m dipole and Butternut HF9V vertical at a new location right on the water’s edge. It favours long path North America/short path South Africa, long path Europe/short path South America and short path North America.

Now QRT - 1115 QSOs into 70 DXCC entities

The weekend DXpedition to Magnetic Island is now over. During the 60 hours on the island there was around 42 hours of actual operating when you factor in sleep and meals. Propagation was definitely not as good as Fitzroy Island, for instance in the first 60 hours of operating there I made 1739 QSOs versus the 1115 made here.

Mind you this IOTA is not as rare and has been activated once this year by a JA operator to another island. Nevertheless it was still lots of fun. 20m was terrible in the evening and very few Europeans there were contacted however 15m to Europe was great. North America continued to be a bit of a no show on all bands so that’s a shame.

Here’s a breakdown of the contacts made:

1071 (96.1%) SSB

    43 (3.8%) PSK31

      1 (0.1%) RTTY

608 (54.5%) 15m

242 (21.7%) 20m

135 (12.1%) 10m

130 (11.7%) 40m

551 (49.4%) Europe

382 (34.3%) Asia

153 (13.7%) Oceania

  24 (2.2%) North America

    3 (0.2%) Africa

    2 (0.2%) South America

Just for interest sake I’ve done a quick comparison between this weekend trip on Magnetic Island OC-171 in December and the weeklong trip to Fitzroy Island OC-172 in October. The clear difference is the poor 20m conditions to Europe in the late evening but fortunately 15m in the late afternoon/early evening meant that many Europeans needing this IOTA were satisfied. Poor conditions to North America continued. Another difference to the past DXpedition was the it was the ARRL 10m contest so there were quite a few VKs there to push up the Oceania percentage.

SSB                96.1% (OC-171) and 90.7% (OC-172)

PSK31             3.8% (OC-171) and 9.2% (OC-172)

RTTY                0.1% (OC-171) and 0.1% (OC-172)

15m    54.5% (OC-171) and 21.6% (OC-172)

20m    21.7% (OC-171) and 65.4% (OC-172)

10m    12.1% (OC-171) and 11.7% (OC-172)

40m    11.7% (OC-171) and 1.3% (OC-172)

Europe                       49.4% (OC-171) and 70.0% (OC-172)

Asia                            34.3% (OC-171) and 25.6% (OC-172)

Oceania                     13.7% (OC-171) and 2.7% (OC-172)

North America            2.2% (OC-171) and 1.4% (OC-172)

Africa                            0.2% (OC-171) and 0.1% (OC-172)

South America           0.2% (OC-171) and 0.2% (OC-172)

1 day down, 1 day to go

It's just over the half way point of the short trip. I'm spotting myself on the cluster everytime I change band to give people a chance to work OC-171. So please excuse all the self-spots but with a 100W and a vertical its not like I'm lighting up any spectrum analysers with my little signal and I'm trying to make the most of the limited band openings here.

Conditions to North America have been terrible. As expected the hills are blocking long path on 20m and there is no short path prop on 20m this time of year. Nothing on 15m short path and the best hope, namely 40m has been incredibly noisy. I did work a few stateside last night on 40m with the dipole but I was spending most of my time calling and calling and listening to the noise. At the same time I had a great opening on 15m to Europe so I ended up spending time there. I'm glad I did because 20m last night was pretty useless here which was a big surprise.

So will such a short time here it's just a matter of working what's open.

I'll keep trying for 40m tonight for North America in case I have more luck. Yesterday there was a total of 702 QSO's made. 73s

40m dipole up finally

After the small pile up of JA's got their Q's on 20m SSB and PSK31 this morning, at 930am local time or 2330 UTC I did the game of "let's get the 40m dipole up" again.

In blazing sun and ridiculous humidity I was able to get it up at a lower height but it's in the clear with a good SWR and a LOT LOT LOT less noise than the vertical. So tonight I'll try for North America on SSB, RTTY and PSK31 in the 0900-1300 UTC period.

Up and running but conditions not great

I'm up and running. The QRN and radar levels on 40m have been really bad. The palm trees are very high and late yesterday afternoon I just couldn't get the support rope up into the palms after many many frustrating throws. The vertical is too noisy for 40m and I really need the dipole up, so fingers crossed today. Email reports last night from W/VE indicate conditions between VK and North America weren't great anyway.

20m to Europe last night wasn't as good as I experienced on Fitzroy Island a couple of months ago. I did get a decent run during the 1300-1400 period including some W/VE's too.

40m tonight

Sorry everyone, 40m is full of radar noise and QRN levels are s7-9+.

I've only been able to get into JA tonight up until 0940 UTC, I will check later tonght hopefully, I'm off to 20m