Hello everyone interested in the super rare grid of EL84. Here is our
second update and current situation:
We will begin our drive down to Key West on Tuesday, July 9th and plan
to arrive at the Yankee Capts berth at about 12 Noon on Thursday, July
11th. We will load our gear on the boat as soon as the Captain is ready
for us and believe that we will depart Key West about 3-4PM local time.
Pete, George, and Dan(see below) will be flying into Key West.
K4N will be operational from July 11th(late afternoon or early evening
local time) to 10AM local time on July 15th. I cannot give an exact
starting time because we don't know how long it will take us to set up
the stations and the antennas after we arrive in EL84 and Captain
anchors the boat. 10AM local time on July 15th is 1400Z on July 15th,
so there is no ambiguity there. After 10AM EDST on July 15th, we will
tear down, pack up, have the Captain bring the boat back to Key West,
and begin our journeys home.
K5YG-Bill(a.k.a. Bill2) has joined up with the group, so we now stand at
7 (brave?) souls. The current group of "Un-indicted Co-conspiritors"
are K5YG-Bill2, N5YA-Bill1, N5NU-Jason, NR5M-George, K9PW-Pete,
N5TM-Dan, and K5QE-Marshall. This will constitute "The Magnificent
Seven", the "Seven Samurai", the "Lucky Seven", or some other hopelessly
bad movie reference, for this trip. It seems to me that seven were
aboard the S.S. Minnow.....
Bill1 and I have spent a couple of weeks rounding up all the bits of
flotsam and jetsam that will be needed for this DXpedition to come off
well. Most all of it is stacked in a pile in Bill1's shack. We are
trying to round it all up into a small pile so we won't miss anything.
I am in receipt of Mel's "Emergency Repair Kit" in case I find my self
with a PL259 cable in one hand and a Type N cable in the other hand that
have to go together.
We will be operating 6M with two stations. Station1 will be a 756Pro2
with an M2 6M1K2 amp and a 6M5XHP with a rotator. We plan to have this
station on the air almost continuously.....on Es whenever possible and
on MS when no E-clouds are in evidence. Station1 will operate on
50.165MHz for Es and on 50.265MHz for FSK441 meteor scatter. K4N will
operate MS on First Sequence at all times.
Station2 will be a 756Pro2 with a Lunar-Link LA-62 and a DEMI preamp.
The antenna will be a 6M7JHV with Armstrong rotation. That means that a
whole lot of antenna swinging is not going to happen. My concept is to
leave the 6M7JHV pointed at WA(except when doing EME), which will cover
almost all the country towards the west. IF some big Es opening happens
out to the west, we can always rotate the 6M5XHP on Station1 out that
way. Station2 will operate 6M EME when the moon is setting and is below
20° of elevation. Station2 will operate EME on 50.195MHz First
Sequence. During EME operations, Station1 will either be silent OR they
might try JT65b operations over tropo paths. This would allow Station1
to take First Sequence and thus not interfere with Station2 for the
approximately 1 hour of EME operations. Station2 will be operating on
FSK441 on 50.270MHz First Sequence in the late evening or early morning
hours whenever Station1 is also running MS. My idea here is to have
both stations running FSK441 MS at night. Station1 will be covering
everything from the Dakotas eastward(more or less), while Station2 will
cover the western US.
Bill2 is bringing along a 2M station this time. He will have an ICOM
7000 with a 2M12 antenna and about 350W of power. He will run Es(if we
get so lucky), any tropo he can find, and FSK441 meteor scatter on
144.145MHz. He probably will try some EME on 2M on our moonsets and
maybe on the moonrises as well. That is his call....
We plan to have Internet via a cell phone lash-up. Hopefully, this will
allow us to "chat" with those interested in working us. We will be using
the FB chat pages provided by Dan-N5TM. I just asked Dan to create a
"K4N EL84 6M" chat page and a "K4N EL84 2M" chat page. This will allow
those interested in 6M to chat with the 6M ops and those interested in
2M to chat with Bill2 or whoever is operating that station. Two
separate chat pages means no confusion between posts for the different
bands. The URL for Dan's FB chat pages is URL =
http://meteorscatter.n5tm.com/chat/HSMS_ChatRoom/ OR just Google "N5TM
Chat pages" and take the first choice. When you sign into Dan's chat
pages, please make your Nickname to be Call + Name + 6digit grid.
Thanks for that.
We will NOT be posting to PingJockey, the N0UK EME-1 reflector, or the
ON4KST reflector pages. These are very fine reflectors, but they take a
LOT of data traffic for each post(coming or going). On a cell phone
connection, this is just a serious problem. Dan's chat pages are very
low traffic and there will not be posts from others that are not
interested in what we are doing. Anyone is free to cross post us onto
one or more of the other reflectors. Thanks for that too.
I personally want to thank the three folks that have helped sponsor this
DXpedition. I don't want to embarrass them by posting their names, but
you know who you are and I thank you for your help.
We certainly hope to work a bunch of folks this time. Almost no one has
EL84 for FFMA and we hope to fix that. Please don't worry about trying
to get your grid across to us. We don't need to know that for a valid
QSO to be put into the logs. You already know where we are going to be,
so we probably will say EL84 occasionally, but that is not required for
a valid QSO. On MS, we will use the standard 26 for a signal report, so
please follow suit there as well. We don't need to know that you are in
EM98 or some such. Just send K4N {Your Call} 26 or R26 and we will make
more MS contacts faster. That gives everyone a chance. GL to everyone....
73 de
N5YA-Bill1
K5YG-Bill2
NR5M-George
N5NU-Jason
K9PW-Pete
N5TM-Dan
K5QE-Marshall
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