Greetings from Rarotonga,
Following the near hurricane force winds that brought down both low band
masts, the broken 160 mast was replaced with the also broken but 10? longer
stub of the 80 meter mast. The vertical section of the 160 L is now only
45? high. We added some radials today, to hopefully squeeze out another db
or so.
Last night was a bit better than the last few days. I heard US working EU,
and even heard DF2PY, but not well enough to try for a QSO.
My sunset was only marginally productive, as everybody was listening east,
but did snag N7JW who was 599+ at 02:47. He spotted me but only 2 more
customers showed up, W1JZ and W6OAR. After a fruitless hour of CQ?ing, it
was bed time until east coast sunrise.
A slow run commenced at 08:04 with W7CT, followed by 14 US stations, mostly
9?s. No east coast was heard. We then QSX?ed for JA, but the total lack of
discipline among the 2nd layer callers takes the fun out of that in a
hurry. Its too bad the many fine operators there have to suffer because of
the hoards of callers who obviously can?t hear who they are calling.
This AM at our sunrise, as the greyline was descending across northern EU,
UA4HBW, RA4LW and UA4HAU called in with excellent signals - just the way
it's supposed to work. I kept calling for another half-hour, but the magic
didn't extend any farther south.
We will try to be on the next 3 days at our sunset, about 0530Z, for as long
as there are some callers, and again at east coast sunrise.
We will be on Friday night at sunset for the ARRL, so listen west once in a
while for the rare E5 mult. We will be high in the band I am sure, avoiding
the wall-to-wall 20 over CQ?ers.
Please get on and give us some Q?s ? it?s a lot more fun getting up in the
middle of the night if there is someone to talk to. If things are slow,
feel free to dupe us so we know we are being heard.
I have read all your individual messages, but since this high-speed
connection is pretty slow, it takes about a minute to just get back to my
web-mail page after reading a message, so won't be able to respond
individually. I normally am on just as the greyline hits Nova Scotia, so I
think I'm on plenty early for nearly all of you. It just usually takes
quite a while to actually work someone, so the spots appear quite a bit
later.
BTW, the island is full of wild chickens, and the roosters are spectacular
in their plumage. Our next-door neighbor, who reliably starts crowing about
an hour before dawn, has been named "Greyline the Alarm Cock". Look for a
pic of him on the blog before long.
73,
Ron KK9K/E51NNN
George K5KG/E51MMM
E51A in the contest
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