Hello to all FFMA and other grid chasers on 6M. I thought that I would
post a progress report on the DXpedition and the efforts to round up all
the gear that we need. I have checked the 1 x 1 callsign database and
we have been authorized to use the call of K4N for this trip.
We have chartered the Yankee Capts out of Key West, FL for the trip. A
contract has been signed with them and a deposit has been made. Capt.
Greg seems most hospitable to all the strange and unusual stuff that we
want to do. We plan to assemble at the Yankee Capts berth in Key West
about 12Noon on July the 11th. We will load our gear and prepare for
departure....which I expect to happen about 3-4PM on the 11th. We will
proceed to Lat =24 32 59 N and Long = 8201 43 W. This is just inside
EL84 at approximately EL84xn. We will be just a bit West and a bit
North of Boca Grande Key in the channel that runs North-South there. We
cannot say exactly when we will be on the air, but we will try to get
everything assembled as quickly as we can. We will operate until 10AM
on Monday, July 15th and then we will tear down and head back to port.
We are hard at work rounding up all the gear for the stations.
STATION1 will be operated 24 hours a day on either SSB/CW for Es or
tropo and on FSK441 for meteor scatter. This station will be a Pro2
with an M2 6M1K2 amplifier. The antenna will be a 6M5XHP with a rotator
on a custom made mast courtesy of M2. For this project, I needed a
one-off custom mast(actually two of them) for the antennas and Mike and
his crew built them and shipped them out in short order. THANKS Mike
and the M2 crew. Frequencies here will be 50.165MHz for SSB/CW and
50.265MHz for meteor scatter. We will always take First Sequence. This
station will have a rotator for the antenna and we plan to point from
NNW to NNE to cover the area from the Dakotas to Maine. We may be able
to point the antenna at the IN-OH border and cover almost everything.
Station2 will be operated for EME on our setting moon when the moon is
below about 20° AND we will operate this station on FSK441 whenever
Station1 is operating meteor scatter. This station will be a Pro2 with
a Lunar-Link LA-62 amplifier and a DEMI preamp. Both stations will take
First Sequence, so we will not interfere with each other. Frequency for
EME will be 50.195MHz and the frequency for meteor scatter for Station2
will be 50.270MHz. The antenna for Station2 will be a 6M7JHV with
Armstrong rotation. Primarily, this station will be pointing to the NW
for meteors and for the setting moon.
We don't know if we will have Internet or not, but I just blew another
$550 on a cell phone repeater system with marine antenna that hopefully,
will give us some kind of cell coverage while on site. We will run that
over to an AT&T wireless access point which will give us a wireless hot
spot for our computers. We will be using the EL84 chat room that
Dan-N5TM has set up for us, if we can get the Internet working.
NEED: I need a 6VDC @ 2A wall wart transformer to provide power to the
cell phone repeater. IF anyone has such a wall wart, please let me know
so we can get it over here. The cell phone repeater comes with a
cigarette lighter plug in....which I can handle because our power
supplies have a cigarette lighter plug-in, but a 110VAC to 6VDC wall
wart would make things a lot easier.
There is just a LOT of "junque" that you have to round up for something
like this. Lots of jumper cables, power supplies, power distribution
blocks, PowerPoles, rotor cable, feedlines, and on and on and on. It
seems like an easy thing to do, but it always tears me up for about 6
weeks. I don't want to arrive out there and find that I have a cable
with a PL259 in my left hand and and another cable with a Type N in my
right hand and they are supposed to go together. AAAAAAaaaaaaaRGH!!!
Please remember that Joey-W5TFW is our QSL manager. Please DO send your
QSL cards with SASE to Joey. DO NOT send QSL requests to the traveling
members. JD-N0IRS is our webmaster and guru in charge of all things
digital.
We certainly do hope that we can work you from the super rare grid of
EL84, so listen up for us and hopefully we can get you into the logs.
73 for now....
Dan-N5TM
George-NR5M
Pete-K9PW
Jason-N5NU
Bill-N5YA
Marshall-K5QE
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