Dear all,

9Q50ON went QRT at 0505 Z on December 13th 2010 with 30442 QSO’s in our log.

We are getting plenty of e-mails from people asking about their QSO or questioning why they don’t find their callsign for a given band/slot in the online log. There are probable many reasons. First of all the final log has to be uploaded to clublog. Our webmaster is going to take care about this as soon as possible. Another reason might be that we busted your call. We are well aware of the fact that some callsigns got incorrectly logged due to circumstances. We admit we are humans and make mistakes sometimes! If you still do not find your callsign in the online log after the final upload please DO NOT send e-mails as we are not planning to change anything to what we originally logged before we get your card/QSL request. However we will use common sense to verify your data on your QSL card against our log. If we find a close match of your callsign within a reasonable timeframe from what you provided then the QSO is valid and we change the log accordingly.

The QSL card has to be designed and printed. Do not expect QSL’s before the end of February 2011. We are going to provide our QSL manager with some simple rules and assist him to get all requests answered as soon as possible. Bureau cards will be answered at a later stage. The log will be uploaded to LoTW much sooner as first announced on this website. Stay tuned for further updates.

Thanks for your understanding.

Merry X-mas and happy new-year from the entire 9Q50ON team.

We have taken down our 2 multiband antenna’s (HEX beam and Spiderbeam), the 160m vertical, the 30m vertical, the RX antenna toward EU. Tonight we will be back from dinner around midnight. 2 stations will remain operational but we don’t know for how long. It depends on the spirit. Most of us had little sleep last week. Today we reached the 30K QSO mark!

For those who still need us on 160M. Send your callsign at a moderate speed eg. 23-25 wpm. Last night we heard lots of stations calling us at a much higher speed. Because signals are very weak it is very difficult to copy callers at 30 or more wpm.Please, if you hear us answering a station and it is not your callsign, do not call on top as this is a waste of time for all of us.This is also true for the higher bands.

There is a large number of dupes in our log on the higher bands. We upload our log about twice a day to clublog. Check the online log, if you are in the log for a certain band/slot do not call us again! Sunday evening 12 December 2010 all three stations will be off air between 1800 UTC and 2300 UTC. We have been invited by our host to join him for dinner at a local restaurant. This time frame can change a little but we expect to be back on air around our local midnight.

73′ es cu 9Q50ON

One of our colleagues uploaded a movie on youtube:

Last night conditions were not as good as the night before. We QRT’ed around 2330 utc.
We called CQ for about 30 to 45 minutes without hearing any signal. Luc managed to put a few NA’s in the log after 0200 utc.
For those who still need a QSO on 160 we would like you to follow these simple rules,when you hear us answering your call and we have your callsign correct please DO NOT repeat your callsign again when sending your report ! Just send RRR and 599 or whatever RST.
Remember that signals are very very weak and QSB wipes out your signal completely. A quick RRR and 599 is getting through much easier.This afternoon we will reverse one of the RX antennas towards VK/ZL/OC. We are going to be listening for those regions around our sunset.

CU sn,
9Q50ON

Last night about 180 stations got into our 160M log.Signals were better than the night before.
We now have three special receive antennas at our disposal. This evening we will start our lowband operation a bit earlier. We remain on 160 al night long.
We will be on our regular frequency 1822.5 QSX down 1817 – 1818.
Besides better RX antennas we are also using the K2 Elecraft for 160 now. It seems to deal better with low signals and noise than the IC7000.

CU on Topband,

9Q50ON.

Last night was our first full night on Topband. We know that our signal is strong but we are having a hard time to dig callsigns out of the noise.

We now have a few receive antennas wich can be used either seperate or combined. The biggest problem is that signals are very very weak and just below the noise level. Most of the time we have to listen for a minute or two and wait untill a callsign pops up over the noise. We can hear a lot of stations calling but we just can not copy any of the callers. It might look silly that while we have hundreds of callers we start CQ’ing again but this is to get a starting point when to listen and get into the right sequence with the pile up. This works both ways i guess, when we stop CQ’ing its your turn to send your callsign at a moderate speed.(23/25 wpm) If you hear us comming back to you do not repeat your callsign, just send some RRRR and your report. It might take a few minutes to complete the QSO so hang in there. We plan to be on the band every evening/night to avoid missing that rare good opening (if there will be any).

Hope to see you soon in our Topband log.