CW vs SSB (WKD)
316 x 305
Band slots (CFM) on Clublog x LoTW
2306 x 2226

Sunday 24 August 2014

Western Sahara on .... CW

S01WS - QSL Card

When I was chasing 5E7R on 40M RTTY last night , spotted S01WS to be active on CW!
Most of the time he is active on SSB but from some time to time CW also. No so fast CW and not in big pile-up. That condition we had last night on 40M. Pleasure to work Western Sahara as my 299 DXCC on CW! At the moment I`ve got only one band confirmed. Waiting for good opportunity to log him on 12M and ... maybe 80M!

TG9AJR - Guatemala

TG9AJR - QSL Card

If you need Guatemala on LOTW look for TG9AJR Juan Carlos is active now on the bands. Had pleasure to contact him on 15 and 17M and received almost instant QSL on LoTW as new DXCC on Phone / 15M and Digital as well. 

Chasing Morocco on the bands

5E7R (EA7FTR, EA5HPX, CN8NK, CN8KD and EB7DX) Team

Had great fun work 5E7R - DX Pedition from Morocco on the bands last few days. I was looking for them to give them a call when and where it was possible. Had to wake up in the middle of the nigh to work them on 80/40M , enjoyed it. Bit of fun at the end of holidays. I hope 5E7R Team enjoyed pile-up too. The hardest bands were on 10 and 12 condition wasn`t good on the beginning but improved later this week. 

Sunday 17 August 2014

Timor Leste by The Best



This is James 9V1YC aka N1YC one of the best CW pile-up runners on HF. He is active now from 4W. Timor Leste and I had pleasure to give him my 5NN few minutes ago. When he started this morning on 12M I had no signal at all. He QSY`ed to 17M later and it was much better here. Worked as new DXCC on 18MHz. His operation from East Timor wasn't announced so it is kind of surprise. In the same time another station showed-up from 4W. 4W/PE7T Wilbert ... on 15M CW. Have fun to work them. Good Luck.

Update.
They will be active till 26.08 which is great news! Online log search for 4W/9V1YC is available here

Friday 15 August 2014

C21BN Nauru

GU74B - Svetlana Tube
Yuki JH1NBN is active again from Nauru as C21BN. Last year worked him on 20M SSB from EI0PL location ATNO. This year very lucky two new bands from my QTH. 17SSB and 15SSB. Nauru is "difficult" location from EI. Signal on both bands weak S3 it was max. I was trying few days ago on 17M no luck. Wide spilt on short window open. Yesterday logged quite "easy". Today on 15M wasn`t the same.It took about 1.5h to log Yuki again. Same story , wide split and EI on the and of EU. With much stronger competitors it is a challenge. In 2012 when C21HA - DX-Pedition was active from Nauru - I had nothing at all from Nauru ... no signal for several days. So many mornings waited for just a whisper ... One day asked a friend of mine in SP to record me in his shack how Nauru can be heard in East EU ... I was shocked ... Thanks Yuki to be active from Nauru ... looking forward now for C21GC Stan for some CW from Nauru! Good Luck

Monday 11 August 2014

EJ1J - EJ0PL QSL card preview

EJ1Y - EJ0PL EU-007 QSL Card

1000 images taken on Great Blasket ... It was hard to make a choice ... which one will the best for QSL card. Finally we decided to print two types QSL. 1) Double QSL card (4 pages) for all Direct OQRS requests ... 2) Single QSL card (2 pages) for BUREAU OQRS requests. For full preview both cards visit our web : http://ej0pl2014.com/

Sunday 3 August 2014

EJ1Y / EJ0PL Blasket Experience 2014

Moving boxes from pier on the Island
Papa Lima DX-Group was active from EU-007 for IOTA Contest 2014 and DX-pedition. We decided "Blaskets" last year shortly after our EU-006 DX-Pedition. But this time activation from Blasket will be different.

Some of our members ativated Great Blasket Island few times. For example it was my 4`th visit on the Island this year and I was active 2 times already from EU-007. We know what we had to do on the Island to get better - North America open  direction.

Easiest way will be stay in "old village" , close to landing pier and here you go. But this location is closed to North West. To prepare better QTH on the Island we had to visit Great Blasket Island in September last year ..... 

Another QUAD run ready to go
Landing pier on the Island was about 1KM away from our chosen QTH. Carry all equipment by hand was
not the option (too heavy , too far , too many  , too long) Quad was the only one option we could afford. Several trips by Quad and the trailer did a job. All our stuff finally landed on our site. Hard job, hard day. From a Vans to a pier , from pier to dinghy , from dingy to a boat , from a boat to dinghy, from dinghy to a pier, from pier to possible Quad loading area, to a Quad then , then push the Quad on the hill , then ..... We had approx 1 Tone of equipment with us .....

Radio shack tent
First job was to organize tent for all our boxes and personal belongings. This tent will be later our radio shack. Afterwards personal tents were organized and kitchen area too. That was it for first day - it was Thursday 24`th July. Next day was planned for antenna set-up. First erected antenna was Hexbeam (SP7IDX version) 6 bands 20M-6M. Then 2 x Yagi Both our Yagi were 3 bands and 3 elements on 10M masts. No Inverted V this time. All sorted by verticals with good radials. So we had verticals for 30M / 40M and 80M all single banded

EJ1Y / EJ0PL QTH
The biggest vertical on the picture here is 80M , the smallest 30M ... no enough room on the picture to show all antennas , our site was big enough to play with them at the good distance one from each other.
Second day finished with all erected antennas and work on radio shack to set-up stations, network connections, computers, internet, band filters , etc, etc. Another busy day but we had to make sure all is working. IOTA Contest tomorrow!


EI5JQ and EI9FBB running IOTA Contest 2014
EJ1Y was our Contest call in IOTA Contest 2014. EU-007 of course! It was 2`nd time when this call-sign went on air. First time was last year from EU-006. On IOTA Contest we had 2h operation shifts. I was on RUN station to call CQ and also on MULTs station to chase Multipliers. Great fun all 24h Several things we changed this year as we are getting more experience in Contesting. But contesting from the Island on DX-Pedition can be challenge. For example if in the middle of the night we are loosing one rotator or power in the shack caused by unknown circumstances.

EI3GK , EI9FBB , F5JTV enjoying rest after contest
After contest we changed our call to EJ0PL. Kind of relaxing operation from Great Blasket Island - EU-007 on several bands and modes. Dave EI9FBB was our designated 6M operator and he was watching this band so often. Probably first time ever RTTY signal was transmitted from Great Blasket Island. Not much , but about 150 QSOs were made on Digi. All statistics are available on ClubLog. I was enjoying CW and SSB call from EU-007. One night , all night long I had great pile-up on SSB from USA, worked few hundreds stations on the other side of Atlantic Ocean, many West Coast as well.

EI9KC on SSB from EU-007
We did almost 2700 QSOs during IOTA Contest, 15359 after that as EJ0PL in just 4 days. Great results. We hope many radio operators got New IOTA or bands slots. I had pleasure to be active on EJ0PL for 33h in total with 2147 QSOs (CW and SSB) I wish to have same signals from Japan as we had on the Island .... It was open sea path into Japan ... can you imagine Japan signals be strongest on 40M than EU ?

Time to go QRT soon. Day before departure we put down few antennas with only Hexbeam and 30M and 40M verticals left for the night. EJ0PL went QRT shortly after midnight 31.07.2014 Departure went much quicker than arrival but was hard too.
HARD Core departure from Great Blasket

Only light stuff went this way. We had some time before QUAD driver arrives and decided to do some training before we go to Rockall EU-189 someday hihi :) Anyone interested ?
During all our stay on the Island we were blessed by great weather. Ok maybe on the beginning was foggy and wet but acceptable , rest of our stay was fantastic. Last day before departure we had rain but that time we still had our big radio shack tent with us. All boxes with equipment were protected against rain but it was unnecessary. Departure day was dry!

Boat arrives in Ventry
UFF ... it is over , our boat reached pier in Ventry near Dingle. All safe and dry .... Do you know what our boatman said on the end ? "I hope I will NOT see you again" .....

On the end more picture from EJ1Y / EJ0PL from Great Blasket Island EU-007 2014 are here :

Flickr.com

And also we had website running which can be visited here EJ0PL2014
QSL card will be designed soon. And maybe by the end of the year video from EU-007 will be available. Stay tune! Thanks for QSOs 73!