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Direct QSL cards in process, first cards are on their way.
PA6Z team arrived home safe... it took us about 8 hours to clear up the site... the drive took an other 4 1/2 hours.
Due to circumstances Peter had to leave us on thursday night. The group now has 6 operators. Tonight we gave our best try on 160m being there for possible openings to Asia / Japan, and later to USA as announced before. Despite this we did not log many DX stations. We blame the propagation gods....
There is a high demand for LX on 160m from the USA. Despite being there from 01:00 untill 06:00 UTC, no DX made it into our 160m log yet. We will be QRV on 5 October from 20:00 untill 22:00 and 02:00 untill 04:00 UTC. Our station has 400W, inverted L and double K9AY for RX.
The higher bands seem to improve, 20m stayed open to the States untill 22:00 UTC, 17m and 15m were also much better than before. We hope to improve our QSO count on these bands the coming days.
Propagation on the higer HF bands is suffering from a recent solar flare, so 18 MHz and up are not very good, with 10 and 12m practically closed. Lower bands on the contrary, wonderfull conditions there. Today we will add a low dipole for 30m because we feel the signals in Europe could be better.
More antennas were added to the antenna farm: an inverted L for 160m and a vertical for 40m. Also extra loops were placed for 136 kHz reception.
Succesfull arrival on site at 6:30 UTC, first contact logged at 30m on 18:14 UTC. Some drawbacks: no room for our 160m vertical. We will construct an inverted L on Sunday, so first operations on 160m will be from that day.
Site update, most of the items now are complete and uploaded to the server. Online log is up and running, using a dummy log from 2004 but will be blank on departure Saturday morning. Guest book has been linked to the PA6Z guestbook.
Frans and Jelmer assembled and tested the new 12 and 17m yagis. The antennas were specially build for the LXpedition. Simulations were done by Arend in 4nec2, so there were no doubts about the correctness of the design. See some pictures here.
The German magazine Funkamateur publishes a story about our expedition with special attention paid to the 136 kHz operation. We are surprised and wonder how the story got there, but positive PR is always a good thing. Tnx Funkamateur!
As rumors go, LX/PA6Z was planning to bring a 4m station as well, but this is now canceled. 4m operation is allowed from Luxembourg, but unfortunately we are bound by our Dutch license regulations were 4m operation is (not yet) permitted. Maybe next time then...
Good news for our expedition: Harry PA1H will join us in our efforts. Until now, his attendance was unlikely because of QRL matters, but these our now resolved. The LX/PA6Z team welcomes Harry on board!
During a field day our 136 kHz station for LX/PA6Z was successfully tested by Dick PA4VHF. All seems to work well and is ready for LX. See some photos and the story on www.pa6z.nl/PROJECTS/projects.html
Plans are made to modify /. build the antennas for the WARC bands, as our previous sponsor is not able to provide us with these antennas. Yagis will be designed and build for 12 and 17m, and a vertical for 30m by Arend PA2AWU.
We will activate the 136 kHz band as well. Dick PA4VHF is charged with building a suitable station and promote the 136 kHz operation.
Confirmation of reservation of the expedition QTH in Wiltz.
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10-03-2007