It was really a privilege to be able to work many of you from Penrhyn last week.
Working the piles on 160 was one of the highlights of my amateur radio career,
right up there with operating from VK0IR in January.
On 160m, the lack of background noise at Penrhyn was truly incredible. We had
only the thunderstorm static to deal with, and it's relatively easy to work
around that.
The strongest 160m signal heard from ZK1XXP was VQ9SS (S9+ on the ICOM
756 with 18dB of front-end attenuation). Some of the NA signals on top band
were
incredibly loud.
Our first night on 80m CW, 21SEP (UTC), was very disappointing. We worked only
two
stations, VK3AJJ and VP8CTR. We discovered that there were two major problems
with the
Battle Creek Special: the matching network switch box had a faulty switch, and
the
feedpoint SO-239 had shorted and arced, causing the phenolic insulator to burn
very
badly when running power (therefore, it was a dead short at the feed point!).
We repaired
the BCS the following morning, and had an excellent evening on 80m on 22SEP,
working
13 EUs and then 340 stations outside of EU. I must add that, after repairing
the BCS and
re-stringing the 160m loading wire to the top of a 50-foot-high coconut palm
tree, the antenna
worked beautifully. We really have to thank the BCS team for designing and
providing a truly
outstanding DXpedition low-band antenna.
I worked a few hours of 80m CW over several days, looking for EU at the mutual
grayline (sunset
at ZK1 and sunrise in EU). We were disappointed in the lack of openings to EU
on 80; we heard
no EUs on the 23rd and 24th (UTC), worked one EU on the 25th and a few EUs on
the 26th.
I tried calling CQ EU on 160m at our sunset on the 23rd and 24th (UTC), with no
results. After
then, we concentrated on 80m at our sunset. Even though I could hear many EUs
Q5 on the
26th, they could not hear me, unfortunately. This may have been due to the
total absence of
man-made noise at ZK1XXP, compared with the higher noise floor in the large
population centers.
On 160, we worked 659 QSOs over 5 nights (123 JA QSOs, several hundred NA QSOs,
a score
of VK/ZLs, and one AF, VQ9SS). During the UTC day of the 23rd, the airport's
primary 12KVA diesel
generator failed. Not wanting to risk overloading the backup generator (if it
failed, then we would
have had to QRT all stations), we operated without amplifiers until the
following day, when we were
confident that the backup machine would stay up. Even on the night of the 23rd,
when running
barefoot, we managed to work 50 QSOs on 160, mainly western NA.
On behalf of all the ZK1XXP ops, I want to thank you for your cooperation and
patience.
If you didn't work us, don't despair: I think we got Warwick (our host, ZK1WL)
fired up to get
back on the air, leaving him an A3S and a Carolina windom. Keep an ear out for
him.
Vy 73 Mike N6MZ
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