On the very last day the cafe was open, they sold the special donuts -- one had to pre-order them. I got one of the last "Jam Filled" donuts. Best $8 I spent on the island. I saved it for part of the day until I worked more CW. It was my way of pushing forward. More CW QSO, then I get the donut. /hihi/
Cooincidentally, the Pacific Northwest DX Convention is underway in Everett, WA. It's a yearly convention that rotates hosting between four major DX clubs in the region.
The first day of the convention is an initial view of the activities that will unfold over the next couple days - meet and greet, and some reconnecting among friends in the DX community.
I gave a short talk about the DX'p to Lord Howe Island on Friday and showed the group a small video that encapsulates the experience in a few minutes -- then we went onto a Q/A period that was interesting. A couple of questions came forward that I thought were interesting.
What was the process to choose the bands and modes that I worked from LHI?
At first I was depending on anecdotal and past experience of what I could recall working Oceania from the west coast. But that was an incomplete understanding. A friend from the club did me a solid favor and sent me a batch of Propagation Data tables and with that information plus the VOACAP Propagation Wheel feature I had a better idea of what region and what bands to work.The other impact was my local time schedule on the island -- I had to adjust to work more often when the opening was there and less coordinated to my local 'waking time' hours.
Why did I choose LHI for a DX'p location?
A few reasons for me to choose LHI stood out. First, it was relatively desireable. Not super rare, but at least in the mid 60's in terms of most wanted. A few very exciting locations were more desireable in the Most Wanted list, but the history of the island was more interesting to me. Plus, a recent DX'p from members of the Willamette DX Club made it seem approachable. For a first-try DX'p, it had an easier logistics for transport -- almost daily flights - depending on the weather. I would learn later that the weather there is far more chaotic than the reports indicate so I was actually lucky to get into the island. Last, it's an environment that is relatively safe and I wasn't too concerned about personal safety. It's a small island that is sparsely populated with one law enforcement officer for 300-ish people that live on the island. Last, but not least the island is so beautiful and magical for a DX'p.
What kind of antenna system was ideal and what antenna system would be recommended for the next deployment in the Pacific?
This is a difficult question to answer. For pure conveneience and ease of installation, the vertical antenna system is ideal. Compact (mostly) and just requires a good set of radials (for typical installations) - if it had been on the beach, the VDA (Vertical Dipole Array) would have been selected -- but the common aspect of the preferred antenna system is a vertical antenna.
But that issue is somewhat academic -- with more weight and shipping allowance, of course a beam antenna would have made a lot of sense. The VDA actually serves both those purposes with the excellent F/B gain ratio, but without the two-element VDA, a vertical wouldn't compete very well on the higher bands as much as a beam. Beams need elevation and that adds a whole long list of infrastructure that would have been ruled out for this particular DX'p to Lord Howe Island.The real heart of the issue is the Location of the Antenna relative to everything else. Permission to place the antenna where I need it to be and with a location that is virtually unaffected by the possibility of coupling with nearby structures is the key. I didn't have that on Lord Howe Island, but I made due with what I had -- and in retrospect it wasn't al that bad -- I worked into EU and SA as predicted. Plus despite a few certain areas in NA, I could reach into NA. Except in all cases, I wasn't very loud. That makes an impact of course -- and I can assign the issue to the antenna location more so than the particular antenna system (assuming vertical or even VDA.I think I also added a note to the answer that spending a lot more time optimizing the antenna for the bands I intended to work would have been time well spent. I used a home-brew clone of the very popular DX Commander antenna. It's a good antenna (the original) and gets good reviews. When deployed in an ideal location, it will perform well. My design was slightly different -- the space between the band-elements was marginally larger and I used aluminum wire rather than copper wire (for weight issues). I remember having a debate with myself if I was going to bring a retail pre-configured vertical like a CrankIR -- I was just really concerned about the weight and the size for this particular DX'p.
Is there a list of things you would add or take away from the list of what to bring on the next DX'p?
This was another interesting question that I wanted to answer more fully in the presentation. I had made copious notes during the Lord Howe DX'p on what I would change about the operation.
Here is the abbreviated list of what would have been different. Not all of these items are purely "things" but aspects or characteristics about the DX'p.
- Avoid callsigns for DX'p that involve the pro-sign (/) in the call. It became extremely tedious having that call with a pro-sign, especially when I was doing S/P during the RSGB IOTA contest. It confused some operators when they heard my call with the pro-sign. OC-004 is the IOTA designator for LHI and I'm sure they would have wanted to log a good island in the contest, but they probably didn't come back to my call for reasons that might include the fact it had a confusing pro-sign. VK2 doesn't "sound like Lord Howe Island".
- Avoid callsign confusion. I thought I had prepared enough to get the callsign settled before going, but even as I announced the facts started to emerge that I had made an error in choosing VK9L/W7BRS and even VK9/W7BRS -- that slowed down the process of getting the Log Book of the World Certificates.
- Antenna Location -- permission to put the antennas exactly where I wanted to put them. I don't think anything would have been much different for me on my QTH at LHI, but I think the next DX'p will require a much stricter policy for antenna location. With this I would add choosing better optimized vertical antenna systems (either the VDA or the CrankIR -- but likely the CrankIR model is preferred).
- Adopt a schedule based solely on the propagation characteristics and not based on local activities on the site. For Lord Howe Island, there were so many (good) distractions. I wanted to enjoy the features of the island as a visitor -- for sure the best part has to be the parts of the island I visited. But, I also came there to operate DX. It took too long to figure out how important this issue is. It comes down to adjusting my schedule to the DX propagation as a primary constraint on when and where to operate.
- Prepare for the time that I was not able to operate. This is bit vague -- let me explain. No matter how serious the DX'p is, the fact that we're on the island is a draw to experience the moment -- go for a walk, take pictures, simply sit and observe and take in the experience. That refers to the tourist element of the DX'p. I've seen several after-action reports of very serious DX'p -- and they were definitely serious about focusing on the operations. But in every one of them there is still an element of fun and the side-show of being on site cannot be simply cast aside for the sake of making Q's.
- So in order to prepare for this, a bit of effort put into plan out how to take advantage of the time-off effectively -- how to limit it to bare minimum without reducing the fun-factor and optimized for the hours that I should be on the radio.
- Weather and local conditions will dominate and control the operation more than even propagation. In extreme weather will it be possible to deploy the antenna? Is there a limit on the antennas that can be safely put up given the local weather? It doesn't matter what the RF propagation is, if the antennas you need cannot be deployed or deployed where they need to be to use that propagation. This is probably a meta-issue that rolls up several of the preceding items -- Antenna selection, Location, Schedule and so on. But ignoring the Weather Constraints and how strongly they dominate everything that can be done is a blind spot for some DX'p -- it wasn't my worst blind spot for Lord Howe Island, but I saw first hand how important it is.
- Backups for everything. I was fortunate. I did not have any serious equipment failure. Except for a suspicious behavior in the amplifier for 40m, the equipment did not fail me. But I was prepared for just about any problem. Every device except the amplifier had a backup. Backup transceiver, cables, fuses, power sources (two power supplies), second set of plugs and adapters, and even the the antenna -- I had a complete backup antenna in case the fiberglass mast were severely damaged or lost. I suppose it would have been interesting to have two complete stations operating -- for Digital Modes -- I could have operated FT-8 on two bands. If I had a second amplifier it would have made the scenario very interesting and exciting. Of course that adds a lot of weight and space to account - as a solo operation on LHI I didn't have the capability to bring so much gear -- but in a team effort -- then absolutely multiple specimens of equipment would be a requirement. Two tools made a huge difference and I sort of knew they would, but there's no question they are must-have on a DX'p: Swiss Army Knife (the most complete) and new roll of Duct Tape. I solved so many problems with those two things. I had a tool bag with other tools (drivers, diagonal cutters, etc..) but the pocket knife and the duct tape were so useful in fixing problems with the antenna and in the station.
- Know your Propagation. As stated earlier VOACAP data is essential. But besides having the data, one needs to really understand how to use the data. Start with the VOACAP propagation tables, and backtrack a schedule that gives access to the bands and regions I want to work. I suppose with more experience I would have been able to more rapidly deduce the bands/modes and times to work. I required a bit more time to sort that out -- and those days of getting the bugs worked out in my schedule are precious days that would have been better spent operating fully.
- Last, comfort. It sounds weird to talk about comfort on a DX'p, but I challenge you to sit in the most uncomfortable chair you own for 3-4 hours and work CW. It's difficult. It's actually quite painful to sit in the wrong kind of chair and sustain the ability to "keep working". Whatever can be done to make it comfortable to operate, do it. I'll also add a few things to this -- hearing protection. For some, that might make no sense -- why would I want hearing protection when I'm trying to pick out calls on CW or SSB? Well maybe not so much on those modes, but even CW can come through fine -- the mode that really needs hearing protection is the digital modes. I ran my amplifier at maximum cooling which meant the fans were actually quite loud. The KPA-500 finals never got over 40 C (intentional, I do not want to roast the finals on a DX'p and although the firmware programming of the amplifier is designed to protect itself I did not want to take chances or operate near the margins of the data sheet for those final power transistors). The fans are loud. Ear protection would have been really helpful to sustain comfort and the ability to operate for an extended period of time.
The rest of the questions were pertaining to the modes and bands I used and some great questions about critters on the island that might be harmful (there aren't any).
The discussion evolved into other topics (mostly about Remote Operations and the Radio-In-A-Box, RIB phenomenon for some DX'p locations).
I may be back home from Lord Howe Island, but as I wrote earlier, my mind is still there. I am already pondering seriously the next island DX'p in the Pacific and I look forward to doing the next one with a team.
If we had a QSO while I was on LHI, thanks for the QSO! I hope it was a new band/mode you needed. I had tremendous fun working from Lord Howe Island.
Thanks
73
Jeff
