I'll publish information here in diary form as I receive it from the team on St Brandon. The only means of communicating with the team (apart from radio of course!) is by a slow data link on an Iridium satellite phone, so please do not expect a large amount of detail. I'll tell you what I know!You can contact me at 3b7c@g3wgv.com. I will consolidate any feedback I receive into a daily e-mail for transmission to the team, which will necessarily also be brief.
This material is the copyright of FSDXA. You are welcome to republish short extracts of these reports provided that full credit is given and this web site is mentioned as the source. Please do not copy material wholesale! Point your audience to this web site instead.
73, John, G3WGV/N3GV
3B7C Pilot
News 17-Sep-2007
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17-Sep-2007 @ 22:45 UTC |
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We think we've fixed the central/western USA leader boards so they include all stations, not just W. Unfortunately, in the process we seem to have broken the zone leader boards. Bear with us. We will get it fixed. |
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17-Sep-2007 @ 13:20 UTC |
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I've received numerous reports (please, no more!) that the leader board scores are wrong for zones 3/4 and other zones where a single DXCC Entity spans more than one zone. The problem is that QSOs in these zones that were uploaded before the new software was implemented don't have the correct zone associated with them. Prior to the advent of the new code, all USA QSOs were associated with Z5.
The solution to this problem is to reload all the QSOs from scratch, all 81k of 'em! I am hoping that we'll be able to do that in the next few days, subject to personnel availability. Meanwhile, I'm sorry, but there's no immediate fix. I will make an announcement here when the logs have been reloaded. |
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17-Sep-2007 @ 12:00 UTC |
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Questions and Answers session, from the team
| Q1 |
How to get a 160m SSB QSO?
Monitor the CW frequency (about 1821.5 kHz) at the start of each hour. If there is no pileup, the operator will QSY for SSB for any waiting stations. |
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| Q2 |
Can ops try 80m CW around 1245z for western USA?
1245z is too early for our propagation. Local sunset is at 1400z. On Sep 16 (GMT) the first 40m CW QSO was made at 1228z (long path to zone 3). The first 80m CW QSO did not occur until 1323z (with VK4), although we were on the air long before then. The first 80m CW QSO with North America (VE4) was at 1330z. |
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| Q3 |
Can ops work zone 3 on 30m between 1400-1500z?
This opening has poor signals for us, and coincides with our primary opening to Asia. A much better opening for zone 3 is long path starting shortly after 0200z until as late as 0400z; during this opening we are only working North and South America and Oceania via long path and signals are better. At present Asia QSOs on 30m represent just 15% of the 30m totals, while North America is 37% (and zone 3 is one quarter of that). This is an example of the tradeoffs to be made over the course of this DXpedition. 1400z-1500z is the end of the Asia opening, and we choose to squeak out as many QSOs from Asia as possible in this slot. This morning (Sep 17/02-04z) the operator was on RTTY, looking long path to the Americas, but got no answers. Check for RTTY on the long path in future days as well. |
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| Q4 |
Nice RTTY signal on 20m on Sep 15/1245z, fading out at my QTH (Florida and Texas USA) by 1400z (Florida) / 1600z (Texas). But the operator was only working Europe. Could you stay longer on the band for us?
Sep 15 was the first day of RTTY operations on 20m. Note that a better opening for North America, without significant competition from Europe, is later in the day at 20-22z. |
Other news from the team:
- Major generator maintenance interval this morning. We were off-air from Sep 17/0400 until about 0600 (depending on band).
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17-Sep-2007 @ 08:00 UTC |
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The on-line log has now been updated to include all QSOs up to 04:00Z this morning. There are now 80,820 QSOs in the log.
From the team:
- We have had stations calling us on 20m CW, asking for 20m SSB. Please be aware that we can have two stations on the air simultaneously on these bands: 80/75, 20, 15 and 10m.
- An extremely noisy night on low bands here affected our ability to copy many signals. 160m North America opening was among those affected. We will keep trying.
- We were late for the start of 80m CW yesterday afternoon due to technical issues in re-configuring the station, so missed the chance to work some southern Californians.We will be there earlier tonight. Later in the afternoon we'll be on 160m looking for west coast long path opening for a few afternoons.
- Propagation seems to be improving the last few days. We are seeing longer openings on the high bands. On the night of Sep 15/16 GMT, 30m ran through the night to dawn without a break, the first time.
- The 80m opening to zone 3 (and probably 4) after about 02z is a long/skew path opening. Earlier this opening is short path. Probably this path switches to skew path over South America around 3B7 sunrise (0200z) in the same way that 40m does, but we can only discriminate two directions.
- Low band operations during the night of Sep 16/17 continued to be plagued by high QRN from storms to our north. (We have had a few brief squalls of heavy rain plus winds to 40 knots in the last few days, but no lightning to ground.) However, signal levels seemed to improve somewhat after 16/2200z this morning.
- The 160m operator is calling CQ for zone 3 from 1730-1830z daily. To date we have worked a few VKs and Pacific stations, but not heard any identifiable signals from zone 3. Zone 3 top band operators are asked to listen for 3B7C (1821.27 kHz). We'd like any reception reports, in addition to some QSOs in the log!
- On Sep 15 an extended 30m opening (short path) to North America occurred. We missed the start (sometime before 15/20z) but it continued until past 16/01z. We will check for this in future days. Today's long path North America opening on 30m (17/02-04z) was spent on RTTY. Although the band was open to Europe, no one in North America was logged. Zone 3 and 4 30m operators should check the RTTY freq (10142) in future days.
- As life settles down into a regular routine, we've been running comparisons between different sorts of antennas on some of the bands; e.g., verticals vs. 2-el beam on 30m. Some of the tests look at intra-band interference, and others look for suitability for different openings. The ideas and observations spark interesting discussion on the veranda between operating shifts.
- Our leading operators have around 5400 QSOs each. The top three are within 13 QSOs of each other. (But it's not a race.)
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