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of the day:It took over three HOURS to get this stake out of the ground yesterday. There are a dozen more.... First packing up starts On Friday, we started taking down some of the antennas that we are no longer able to use now that we have a much smaller team on the island. We took down one of the 20m beams, a 15m Yagi and a 10m Yagi. People shouldn't get too concerned about this however: we still have one 20m Yagi, one 15m and two 10m, so there's still plenty of hardware in the air!  Staking
their claimWe had huge problems yesterday, removing some of the very long stakes used for the big 20m antenna. One of these stakes, in particular, was rammed into extremely hard compressed coral/earth and was impossible to remove. We had to dig it out using a pickaxe and then drill the remainder of the hard packed soil using the big stone drill! It took us three hours to get one stake out! Let's hope that this is not a frequent occurrence as we try to decommission all the other antennas! Picture: Neville, G3NUG bangs in one of the long stakes. This was three weeks ago. On the bands Conditions have been markedly poorer in the past week compared with when we started operations at 3B9C. Most noticeable is that the SFI has dropped from around 130 to well under 100. This makes a huge difference to propagation and unfortunately we are seeing most bands open for less time each day. We are trying to be on whenever there is propagation but it's getting harder to find those openings! Pirate activity We are increasingly aware of pirate operation using our callsign. This has been especially troublesome on RTTY, where we have discovered several hours of illicit operation. There have also been problems on CW and SSB. In all cases the pirate operator seems to be competent and one can only wonder how it can be that someone with these skills cannot find a more productive way to use them. Check the online log Anyway, we appear to be stuck with the problem. 3B9C will not alter its operation in any way and the best advice we can give is to check the online logs for confirmation that you have a QSO with the real 3B9C. Just like people who insist on calling out of turn, in the middle of other QSOs and when 3B9C is calling someone else, this seems to be a problem that we simply have to put up with. It is a regrettable indictment of amateur radio that such misguided people have a foothold in our hobby. Let's try to ignore them as much as we can. Go to Saturday SSTV -> |
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