1 Northwest Indiana DX CLUB Volume 4, Issue 4 April 2016 I NSIDE T HIS I SSUE 1 President Speaks 2- Member News/DX News President’s Corner Heard Island is on the air, if you can hear them over all the fools who want to interfere. I wonder what ever happened to the real Ham Radio. Juan de Nova Is. crew is on the island and should be on the air Wednesday evening. Our meeting on March 26th at the Viking Chili Bowl was great. Jerry Hess gave his presentation on his Dinosaur Amplifier and pictures are on page two. Enjoy the spring and we will meet again in June. Hopefully, it will summer by then. 73 John, W3ML Happy DXing! Don’t Forget DXCC CARD CHECKING Doctor Richard Lochner, K9CIV has been appointed an Official ARRL DXCC Card Checker. Contact Rich to schedule an appointment for card checking. You may email him at [email protected] for details on how to mail your cards to him, if you desire to go that route. NWI DX Club Website http://nwidxclub.weebly.com/
Transcript
1
Northwest Indiana DX CLUB
Volume 4, Issue 4 April 2016
I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E
1 President Speaks
2- Member News/DX News
President’s Corner
Heard Island is on the air, if you can hear them
over all the fools who want to interfere. I wonder
what ever happened to the real Ham Radio.
Juan de Nova Is. crew is on the island and should
be on the air Wednesday evening.
Our meeting on March 26th at the Viking Chili
Bowl was great. Jerry Hess gave his presentation
on his Dinosaur Amplifier and pictures are on
page two.
Enjoy the spring and we will meet again in June.
Hopefully, it will summer by then.
73
John, W3ML Happy DXing!
Don’t Forget DXCC CARD CHECKING Doctor Richard Lochner, K9CIV has been
Making a long story short, I suffer from an aggravating form of insomnia that often has me awake at odd
hours of the night. The other night I was able to turn this affliction into “a cloud that has a silver lining”.
For the past several years, as a personal challenge, I have been chasing the ARRL Five-Band DXCC award.
This award requires that a minimum of 100 entities be worked on the five “traditional” HF bands, i.e. 10, 15,
20, 40 and 75/80 meters. Additional endorsements are available for working other bands such as 160, 6, 2
meters and the WARC bands.
A review of the logs revealed that over 100 entities had been worked and CONFIRMED on four of the five
required bands and two of the WARC bands. The 75/80-meter band was a problem. A big problem! Over
many years, well over 100 entities had been worked but not all had ever been confirmed. A QSL card or
LOTW confirmation is necessary for an entity to count. Getting a card from 35 plus years ago is impossible.
My 75/80-meter confirmations stood at 85. Close but not good enough.
Slowly I have been adding to the count.. Each season a few new contacts were made but many are slow or
haven’t responded with a confirmation. For example, it took QSO’s with five different Argentine stations
over three years before one confirmed with a QSL card. Slowly the count has increased. This is being done
during a cycle of high sunspot activity that results in poor conditions on the low bands. The season
generally lasts from mid-December to mid-March. Some activity could happen during the brief “gray-line”
5
period each morning and evening. As always, propagation is meaningless unless the DX station is on the
air.
A big problem for mid-western USA DX’ers is that we reside in the infamous “Black Hole” of DX. In just
about every direction we face a wall of enthusiasts that must be overcome before the DX hears us. The East
Coast is much closer to Europe than we are. The same applies to the W4’s who block our path to the
Caribbean, South America and Africa. Ditto for the situation from 6 & 7 land to Asia and Oceania. We
have to work hard to hurdle these walls between us and the DX.
Low band DX from 9-Land can be a difficult proposition.
For two weeks of this past March, a team of nine hams, all but one from Poland, operated as 5J0P from
HK0- San Andrés and Providencia, a DX entity off the coast of Columbia. This was a counter that I did not
have. The team seemed to have concentrated mostly on the higher bands but did do some operating on 75/80
meters. The spots on the web showed them on 75/80 for brief periods but I found them barely readable from
my QTH and of course the W4’s had their say first. The expedition’s equipment was Elecraft and Kenwood
transceivers with several amps in the 1 kW range. The 75/80 antenna was a two-element phased vertical
array.
At 3:30 AM on March 10th
, I was in bed, wide awake and staring at the ceiling. Being somewhat of a “Type
A” personality, I thought this is a waste of time so why not get up and see if anything is on the air.
I wandered into the shack and fired up the computer to look at the current spots. Everything on 75/80
meters was over one hour old. Forty meters showed one interesting station, a T32. He was about an S-4
working mostly JA’s with an occasional West Coast station thrown in (the wall strikes again). What the
heck. I don’t have T32 on 40 meters, so why not give it a try. It would be a counter should I try for the DX
Challenge Award. After futilely chasing the T32 awhile, up popped a 5J0 spot from a Florida W4 on 75
meters! 3.795 MHz listening down 5.
I quickly changed frequency and to the appropriate dipole antenna. Listened hard but nothing was heard.
The Panadaptor showed a weak signal about 2 Kc down. A nudge of the VFO knob revealed my 5J0
working South Americans (mostly PY’s) simplex. His signal was about S-3 but very readable in spite of the
QRN from lighting crashes (the weather radar showed a band of heavy thunderstorms stretching from Texas
gulf coast to the western Carolinas).
It was time to put the amp into high gear. In situations like this, 100% effort is called for but don’t over
drive the amp… QRO! Life is too short for QRP! Everything ready? Let’s go! A quick drop of the call
letters. Nothing. He went back to another PY. Try again. Again nothing. Once more and eureka! Great
ears on San Andrés Island. We had a new one worked for the band. How sweet it is! The operator on the
other end was Jurek-SP3GEM. Even after decades of DX, I still get a charge out of working a “new one”.
The Polish 5J0P San Andrés Island Expedition had a nice twist for their operation. A “Real Time Logging
Console” was available on the Web Site. Within seconds of making the contact my call letters popped up
6
along with the band and mode. Neat stuff. They also gave you the ability to check the logs via ClubLog or
their Web Site. Hopefully this is the wave of the future as it could eliminate a reason for some operators to
make multiple “insurance calls” thus reducing the clutter in the pileup.
Confirmation should be a snap. This expedition seems to have the entire QSL base covered. LOTW, Buro,
direct to a manager and ClubLog’s OQRS - Online QSL Requests program.
Operating on 75/80 meters in the wee hours of the morning is somewhat different than it is in the early
evening.
1. First, there are few if any “good old boy” rag chewers complaining about and sometimes deliberately
QRMing any DX station near their “private” frequency.
2. Second, along with the “good old boys” missing, there were few domestic stations transmitting. They
have all gone to bed. Less competition in the pileups.
3. Third, the band is open longer distances than earlier in the evening. Unfortunately there are few DX
stations on the air. They too must be sleeping.
4. Fourth, it seems that the QRN from atmospheric disturbances (thunderstorms) travels further. An
example is the lightning interference I experienced with the 5J0P contact. Much of the storm was over
900 miles away and the interference was significant. During early evening hours this same interference,
while sometimes bothersome, would have been significantly less.
5. Fifth, even though it was late summer south of the equator, it was possible to hear and work stations in
Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil. True, they were very weak but still contacts could be made. A
possible trans-equatorial path?
So where does this put me in the quest for 75/80-meter DXCC? Based on the progress of the past few years,
it will be sometime around 2018/2019 before the logbook has the magic 100 confirmed. Looking to work
that elusive new counter I will continue checking the spots, spinning the dial, listening and pouncing.
As a post-script, I did eventually get the T32 on 40 meters.
- 73’s and Good DX -
7
QSL Card of the Month A collection of the old, the new, the rare, the exotic or just interesting
Howland Island – KH1 March-April 1988
Club Log 2016 Most Wanted Rank: 10
CQ zone: 31 ITU Zone: 61
Continent: OC
Primary prefix: KH1
Location: 0.50°N -176.00°E
Beam Headings from Northwestern Indiana: 269°/89° 6165mi / 18693mi
Howland Island is an uninhabited coral island located just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean,
about 1,700 nautical miles (3,100 km) southwest of Honolulu. The island lies almost halfway between
Hawaii and Australia and is an unincorporated, unorganized territory of the United States. Geographically,
along with neighboring Baker Island, it forms part of the Phoenix Islands group. It is perhaps best known as
the island Amelia Earhart was searching for but never reached when she disappeared during her round-the-
world flight in 1937.
Naturally uninhabitable, there have been found various indications of early visitors, probably natives drifting from windward islands, whose traces were still visible in the remains of a canoe, a blue bead, pieces of bamboo, and other distinctly characteristic belongings. Archaeologists have dated the earliest human presence to about 1000 BC as possibly being eastern Melanesians. From about 1857 to 1878 the island was mined for guano. In 1935 an attempt to colonize the island was made with the idea of building a runway for service of Trans-Pacific commercial flights. No aircraft are
8
known to have ever landed there. The settlement was abandoned in 1942 after a Japanese submarine and several aircraft bombarded the island. In September 1943 the island was occupied the United States Marine Corps and known as Howland Naval Air Station until May 1944. All attempts at habitation were abandoned after 1944. The island is now managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an insular area under the U.S. Department of the Interior and is part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Howland Island National Wildlife Refuge consists of the 648-acre island and the surrounding 410,351 acres of submerged sea bottom. The NO1Z/KH1 operation made nearly 27,500 QSO’s during 150 hours of operation. That was the first operation from Howland since 1948. It was last activated in 2002. It has been reported in the DX Bulletins that Dr. Hrane Milosevicy-YT1AD (Leader) and (Co-Leaders), Paul Ewing-N6PSE, Dave Collingham-K3LP and Aleksey Romanof-UA4HOX are planning a large expedition in the Pacific Ocean to Howland’s neighbor, Baker Island. The expedition is planned for September/October 2017. Landing on the island will require a special permit USFW service and “the Permit is coming soon”.
-73’s and Good DX!- ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Received an email from Bill - KC9MTP
I just wanted to publicly thank Tom - W8FIB for coming over to my new home last weekend with his cousin
to help put up a G5RV antenna in my tall trees.
Normally I'm the one running out on house calls to help out other fellow hams do antenna work. All part of
having a young back I guess. Last weekend Tom made a hard effort to make sure I'd be home for their
arrival to assist in raising it. He was not going to let me go another weekend without my rig on the air
knowing some rare DX was coming up soon.
So Sunday the 21'st arived and after a bit of quick eyeballing some prime trees a plan was made and we went
at it. We overcame a few minor roadblocks and had the new antenna easily 60'+ in the air. Now back inside
the shack we spun the dial around several bands with my FT-950 and they were completely filled, nearly
edge to edge, with many different countries due to the ongoing contest. Perfect timing to try out some DX
with a new shack and antenna.
I gave Tom the captains seat and my Bencher BY-1. After making some antenna tunes and adjusting the
keyer speed Tom went at it and logged at least 3 contacts to distant strange and foreign lands with precise
combinations of magical little dit's and dah's. HI HI. A response came back pretty much fist try for each one
if I remember correctly.
9
Long story short the new antenna works very very well at the new QTH and if it wasn't for Tom and his
cousin insisting I stop making excuses about no time to get my antenna up and then lending a hand I would
have let it go longer and missed out on a lot of upcoming DX this year. Since we put it up it came down due
to storm Tim, but I was able to quickly get it back up today and log EA3BOX on 17M phone my first try
around noon. It was actually my first contact at the new QTH and am very happy my FT-950 @ 100W
received a solid 5X5.
Thanks Tom - W8FIB for all the elmering, Field Day fun, and taking time out of your weekend to help me
I want to thank those that have been sending in articles for the newsletter. All items are appreciated. Don’t forget to send in any information you would like to share with the Club members.
