This is the last night operating on Cocos Keeling Island. Tomorrow we all fly home and tear down will start around 8am local, (0130z).
Currently we are taking one last chance to call NA & SA on 17m (18075 CW) . We are focusing on USA tonight in a last night concerted effort…. The path is tough and conditions not favourable but if you can hear us call us, we plan on being here all night!
The team is now fully established on the island although their Internet communications are very limited. When you do hear us please spot us as we cant easily let people know when and where we are on otherwise.
Lee and Adrian have managed to send the following photos and notes today to give you an idea of the arrangements and the station out on Cocos Keeling Island.
We landed on Cocos Keeling Island on Tuesday having flown from Christmas Island that afternoon. The first thing we have noticed is that its windy…a constant 20-30 knot wind from the south east – 25 hours a day so far….
On the ground we were met by Peter Robinson who was keen to sit for his amateur radio licence. After dinner the first night, Lee VK3GK set off with him to his home where he conducted a remote assessment with Ron VK2DQ via Skype. After a few internet issues, we now have a new resident ham on Cocos Keeling Island. Keep a look out for Peter VK9FCKI in the near future!
This is our residence on Cocos Keeling Island. You can see the 2 x Yagi for 20/15/10 and 17/12/30 plus the 160M vertical (inverted L on a 18M long fiber glass pole) and 10 to 80M vertical in the yard. The house is locally known as “pizza house” but the official name is “My Island Home”.
Getting the 200kg of baggage to the house was an exercise itself! Once there we managed to initially erect the 80-10m vertical using a convenient “Hills Hoist” clothesline (very familiar to many in VK at least).
To get the beam antennas in the air, we then needed a couple of suitable lengths of pipe. The locals on the island suggested we take a trip to the local “transfer station” which they said should have everything we needed – a bit like the local “Bunnings” hardware store island style! (Australian’s will be familiar with those stores – equivalents would be Lowes or Home Depot in the USA).
With the necessary pipe in hand, the team set about completing the antenna systems. You can see below Tony and Adrian assembling the 2 element Rippletech Yagi for 20/15/10m.
We are very happy with the results, with a lower noise floor than when on Christmas Island and pileups such as this one on 17m up to 5kHz wide, as seen on our Icom IC7300 radios kindly loaned to us by Icom America.
We are now looking forward to Chris VK3FY and Peter VK3FN joining us this weekend for the Oceania DX CW Contest! Still plenty of time to get VK9CI in the log so hope to see you on the air, and again please spot us if you hear us as our other communication avenues off the island are limited.
Charles M0OXO also reports that the first round of logs have arrived from the team on OC-003. They are now being uploaded to Clublog plus M0OXO OQRS and Logsearch.
https://secure.clublog.org/logsearch/VK9CI
73 from the team on Cocos (Keeling) Island de VK9CI QRV 160-10m!
The SPE 1.3kfa linear amplifiers are doing sterling service at VK9XI according to Luke VK3HJ
We just got the AS-SAL30-MK2 RX array tuned and performing well. As the video shows, from an S9 to S0-S1 signal flipping the arrays direction 180 degrees. We could hear many W’s calling on our Sunrise this morning but just too deep in the noise to get them, hopefully this will make the difference. Listen around 22:30z….. But the opening is very short to East coast USA….. Maybe just only several minutes….
As we prepare to depart the mainland the team wishes to sincerely thank our commercial and individual sponsors for their support of this venture!
Special thanks to the following who have made individual contributions to this expedition
Update 2nd October:
By now all of the 200kg+ of equipment will have been repacked and the team is preparing to depart. Wish us luck and hope to work you all from VK9XI and VK9CI over the next 2 weeks!
Dateline 28th September 2017:
With only 7 days to before the team leaves for the islands, equipment is still arriving. The box of HF W3NQN Band Pass filters and the SAL30 were delivered moments ago. A delivery from our friends at DX Engineering arrived via DHL as well. Now to unpack the goodies to configure and test with the SAL30 and IC7300 prior to repacking and departure for the islands in a few days time.
A great big thanks to Tim Duffy and the team at DX Engineering and Jay at Array Solutions!
Lee VK3GK reports: “Great news from Jay at Array Solutions…… The AS-SAL30 MK2, RX array is on its way. Our secret weapon for the low bands arriving soon.”
Jay from Array solutions writes:
VK9CI & VK9XI DX-peditions.
Shipping today Friday (Texas) to Australia (Saturday already), VK-land:
1 SAL-30 Mark II, the new aluminum mast SAL-30
18 Bandpass filters
Good luck to all the team working on this effort, have fun and many QSOs!
The team are now getting quite excited and are itching to be on their way. Time to start tuning up your own stations so that you will be able to work them next month!
News just in from Adrian KO8SCA is that the 4 ICOM IC7300’s have arrived safely in New York today.
Its great to have ICOM America as one of our Major Equipment sponsors who are loaning us these great transceivers for the DXpedition. They arrived in a Pelican case, ready for traveling!
A perfect day to do some prep work for our radio trip to Christmas and Cocos islands in a couple if weeks. Much thanks to the packer upper of the DXengineering hex beam last time. It makes reassembly to check so much easier.
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