News bulletin@Grenada… #1

Yesterday, we set up the 160-meter vertical and further tuned the 80m vertical. They are standing. The noise level is extremely low here, which we did not expect. Yesterday evening, we were already QRV on 160m in CW. It seems that we hear better than you hear us because we have to repeat the call regulary. Only Europe and the USA could be worked. 80 meters is slightly better. Towards morning (local time), several Japanese stations were logged on 80m. We occasionally miss our internet link, but rest assured, you are in the log! Daily updates are provided via DXlog itself. Club Livelog is a tool, but we cannot guarantee 100% that all QSOs are up to date due to the poor WIFI connection... Today, we only have to hang the 60m antenna, then all antennas are operational. One of our radios was broken upon arrival, as you know, but today our extra radio arrives, giving us some additional possibilities. The pile-ups continue to be enormous...

We are QRV with 2 stations

Our flight went well. All our equipment had arrived. Yesterday we were able to install all antennas except for the 160m antenna. Unfortunately, there is one radio DOA. He no longer gives power. We looked into it but unfortunately didn't find the error. Today we are going to try to get an extra radio so that we can transmit with 3 stations. The humidity here is very high, with very hot temperatures. A day like yesterday was very tiring for old guys like us. The many rain showers in between mean that we have to stop regularly. The K9AY RX loop is also available.

We arrived at the Frankfurt airport…tomorrow we will leave for Grenada

We arrived at the Frankfurt (D) airport. Checked in the hotel and had a great time in the "Italian" restaurant. The final test was run with the PC combination we will use @ Grenada. We did a live test and all tests were successfully completed.... The final stage is coming soon, hihi....

The license came not a day too soon. Yesterday we received the long-awaited signature from the pri-minister...

Nice pictures taken from one of our houses

Nice pictures taken from our QTH @ Grenada

A few recent taken pictures of our QTH in Sauteurs reached us... I looks like a nice location to run from...
The beach looks rather small but offers opportunities to put down some vertical antennas.
More pictures can be found here

All our suitcases are packed!

All suitcases are packed...ready for transport!

Karel, ON5TN began with packing the suitcases... A total of 337 kg of gear was packed into different sizes of suitcases, bags and longue ski cases (spider poles).

Final Live Clublog test

Final tests on the Clublog livelog tests

Yesterday Filip, ON4FF and Marc ON6CC did the final test on the configuration of our 3 logging PC's with Live Clublog. A 4th laptop will assist us in handeling or correcting the log updates. We are using a Raspberry Pi 4 to do the job + 1 spare if things fail. A Raspberry pi is handy if one of the PC's crashes, or does not have a decent connection with the network anymore. If local internet connection does not allow us to make an internet connection, we will still have our MIFI connection to upload the log.

We are good for the DX Pedition Trophy 2024

The event was born in 2016 on the idea of some lovers of the Dx and Dx Pedition.


The annual event (January 1st-December 31st) is to be ahead of the competition it self, a great party where many friends with the same Hobby from around the world join, and also want to be a way that encourages small open to the world of Dx Pedition as a hunter and to little stations to be heard more often during the course of the year;

What is it about:

During the course of the year the Staff decides a number of Dx Pedition + or - easy to do around the world, and for each of them each participant has to try to make the most of the qso to fill in more possible slots in vari log;

At each end, Dx Pedition will take care of the Committee to extrapolate your log call and calculate the score obtained by each participant, so you do not have to do anything except to do the qo (no station log should be sent);

More info at this link

Test – day at ON5TN

Testing 3 stations with the amp

We did a RFI test in combination with all possible configurations of the frequencies between 1.8 and 28 MHz. Not all bands did react well and we had some finetuning to do. It was the first time we met with the full team.

Bjorn, ON9CFG our pilot station

Our main pilot, Bjorn, ON9CFG

Bjorn, ON9CFG will be our pilot throughout the DXpedition. Bjorn has been our main pilot in 2 other Dxpeditions in the past.... 9U4U and EP6T. If you have any questions related to the DXpedition please ask him...on9cfg at telenet.be, thanks!

 

Upgrade in performance with the 80 & 160m vertical

Update on the 80 & 160m combo vertical

Marc and Karel did some interesting tests with their combo vertical. The 80m part performed well in combination with the 160m vertical on one fiber pole. Next time the 160m portion will be handled. Marc uses a hairpin match to get the impedance right