Fellow Topband DXers,
A few years ago at Dayton, Eric K3NA and I discussed doing relatively
small-scale lowband trips to counters that perhaps had been well-covered
by expeditions on the higher bands, but not on the lowest bands.
We would need good data for this, but IMO there were no good
topband-only Most-Wanted surveys available, so I decided to create one.
Not being even a capable amateur programmer, I turned to my friends.
KK6EK said he would do it, but Bob then fell in love, got married, and
went off into other things. My second partner was willing, but
over-committed and dealing with chronic health problems, so that went
nowhere, as well. Meanwhile, Eric went off and did Ducie and now plans
Jarvis and South Georgia.
Recently, I encountered a RTTY Most-Wanted survey written by Larry
Gauthier, K8UT that included everything I wanted, so I asked Larry if he
could port it to 160m. He agreed and now, after sufficient testing, it
is ready to go. It includes all current DXCC counters, and hopefully
will encourage some little pistol operations to reasonably reachable
counters as well as provide more data for larger, more ambitious
DXpeditions.
The survey is up at http://topband2011.semdxa.org and I encourage you to
take a look---and to submit your needs. Because there are 340 counters,
it will take a little while to complete, but the results should justify
the effort.
I plan to leave the survey up for most of the summer, and to publish the
results before the next lowband season--both online and in the amateur
press.
The more data received, the more accurate the survey will be. Please
feel free to suggest additional ways to put this survey before the
world's topband DXers. Unfortunately, I have already found that many DX
club websites are in a state of neglect, 404-not found, or have no
obvious email contact path to the club leadership.
73,
Garry, NI6T
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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
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