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of the dayThe termination at the end of the 160m European beverage antenna. The beverage runs for around 200m, above a wall. There is a second beverage of the same length above a second wall, which is in the perfect direction for Japan. 150,000 QSOs in the log At 11:13 today, Sunday 11-April we broke through the 150,000 QSOs mark. This is a real milestone for us and although it would have been nice to beat our own D68C record of 168,722 QSOs, this was never really a practical proposition. The numbers speak for themselves: we have barely half the number of QSOs on 10m and only 80% on 12m of the QSOs made at D68C. It's simply a case of being three years further down the solar cycle. At D68C, the average SFI was around 200, whereas now it is less than 100. We're not disappointed though - 150k still places us in 2nd place with a considerable margin and we feel that we can safely say that we have tried our very best to give QSOs to every part of the world, on every band and mode that propagation permitted. A few people have commented on the fact that we have many duplicates in our log and that therefore the numbers are not really what they seem. It's certainly true that a few people have worked us a ludicrous number of times on specific band/mode slots but they are firmly in the minority. A quick exercise with an Access database shows that we have over 130,000 unique band/mode QSOs (i.e. all dupes removed) and that still seems to be a decent number to us. Remember, all DXpeditions suffer duplicate QSOs in their log, not just 3B9C.  FO-29 SatelliteWe have now made a number of QSOs on the FO-29 satellite. This satellite provides extremely short openings to other populated parts of the world, so it's been something of a challenge to get people to be on at the right time for a QSO. We're delighted to have made at least a few satellite QSOs. On the air 160m and to a certain extent, 80m were very poor last night. We could tell that there were people calling us but the signals were right on the noise floor and it was like pulling teeth making QSOs on 80m. 160m fared worse still, with just 9 QSOs between 12:30Z and dawn. Nevertheless, we will operate both 160 and 80 again throughout tonight, which is, of course our last night of operation. Hopefully conditions will improve and we can get a lot more of the deserving in the log.  SSTVWe have made about 50 SSTV QSOs, principally on 17m. Realistically, with the huge demand for CW, SSB, RTTY and PSK, all of which offer the prospect of several QSOs per minute, it's hard to justify spending a lot of time on SSTV in our last day of operation. We know this will be a disappointment to SSTV aficionados and we can only apologise that we simply do not have the resources to dedicate a primary station to that mode. As an aside, it would be so much easier to justify SSTV on a DXpedition if the QSO time could be reduced. The inability to use the old 7 second frame black & white system is a serious disadvantage in this regard. Had we been able to use this SSTV mode then many more QSOs could have been made. SSTV software developers might like to consider whether a no frills DXpedition mode could be implemented with very short frame times. Taking it all to pieces We are slowly decommissioning parts of the DXpedition equipment that are no longer being used. The main task starts at 06:00 local time tomorrow morning, when we start taking down the huge array of antennas erected four weeks ago. The plan is to have all antennas down and ready for trucking to the container by Tuesday morning. We will also decommission and truck as many of the transceivers and linears as we can. The computer network will be closed down and packed during Monday night and Tuesday afternoon, ready for trucking on Wednesday morning. We hope to have the entire container packed by Tuesday night, leaving Wednesday for tidying up the site and other final details. The team flies out from Rodrigues to Mauritius early on Thursday afternoon. Go to Monday -> |
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