Hello everyone....the K5N Grid Activation Group wishes to announce our
grid DXpedition plans for 2012. There are some details that are not yet
settled, but mostly here is the plan. I want everyone to understand
that this is more than just a plan. Several thousand dollars of new
equipment, some of it very specialized and / or purpose built, has been
purchased. We are in the process of integrating the gear now.
Note that exact frequencies and other such details are not yet decided.
K5N used 50.215MHz when we were in Rocksprings, TX for the Great Winter
DXpedition of 2011. Most probably, Group 1 / K5N will use that
frequency while we are in DL88. Group 2 MAY chose to use 50.220MHz, but
they have not yet made a final decision. We will announce any final
details at a later time.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me OFF the
reflector. Thank you.....
73 Marshall K5QE
Member K5N Grid Activation Group
Member Grid Bandits
**********Begin Announcement**********
The K5N Grid Activation Group Plans for 2012
A Grid Bandits DXpedition
The K5N Grid Activation group would like to make the following
announcement of our plans for DXpeditions for the summer of 2012. We
plan to activate three rare grids in the Big Bend area of Texas. We are
planning to field two groups simultaneously. Both groups plan to be
operational on June 20th in the late afternoon until midnight on June
24th. There will be driving days on each side of those dates.
We really do want to work everyone in the FFMA world that needs these
rare grids, so try to keep those dates open and hope for some really
good Es openings. We will operate FSK441 digital meteor scatter during
the early morning and late evening hours when there is no Es.
Group 1 will make another assault on DL88 in the Big Bend National
Park. Maybe the third time will be the charm. Group 1 will use the
callsign K5N. We will be taking the 2 x 6M5X antenna with full AZ / EL
steering. We plan to use a K3/10 with a medium power solid state
amplifier for normal operations and a Pro2 with an M2 6M-1000 for EME
operations. We plan to try EME on the last two days for about 2 hours
each day. Because of the severe power budget problem, Group 1 will not
operate from Midnight until 5AM. Group 1 will have a BGAN terminal for
Internet access(SEE BELOW).
Group 2 will set up on the DL79-DL89 grid line in the Big Bend Ranch
State Park. Group 2 will be using the callsign N5K and will be using a
single 6M5X and an M2 6M-1000 solid state amp. We believe that Group 2
will have limited Internet access through a cell phone hookup. Group 2
has not yet published their operating times or frequencies, so stay
tuned for that.
Our support staff will be Joey-W5TFW and JD-N0IRS. Joey has agreed to
serve as our QSL manager again this year. PLEASE send your QSL cards to
Joey with an SASE. DO NOT send QSL cards to the traveling members as we
will not have any blank QSL cards to fill out and return. Our web and
logo guru is JD-N0IRS. JD has also been very helpful with the editing
of the movies taken on site. He is very good. The results show up on
the Grid Bandits web pages under DXpeditions. Check them out at
http://kcvhfgridbandits.com/kc_vhf_grid_bandits_042.htm.
CONCERNING THE INTERNET AT DL88
The only way that we have found to have Internet at DL88 is via an
Inmersat BGAN terminal. BGAN is expensive and the data plans for the
terminal run $10/MB!!! That means that we cannot use any kind of web
based chat, such as PingJockey or ON4KST, because those run from 7KB to
15KB per post! We are planning to set up a private packet
cluster....this because packet cluster posts are only a few bytes rather
than 7-15KB per post. If you are not familiar with the DX Packet
Cluster, now would be a good time to look into it. You need to get a
decent Packet Cluster client and to learn a bit about it. The N1MM
logging program has a built in Packet Cluster client that is pretty easy
to use. It is important for us to have a private packet cluster, so
that all our posts do not go out to the HF world AND so that ONLY people
that want to talk to us will be seen by us. Remember, BGAN data is very
expensive, so we don't want to see posts that are not meant for Group 1.
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
|