Mike, would you please send this message to NCDXC
chat.
Thank you and best wishes,
Paul N6PSE
Greetings to our NCDXC friends from the
VP8STI/VP8SGI team,
The team is packed and about to head out to the
Falkland Islands to meet the Braveheart. We hope that
good weather and
calm seas prevail so that we can land at Southern
Thule Island on January 17th as planned.
Our ship owner, Nigel Jolly tells us that it is
common to have to wait offshore for days at a time for
calm enough
weather to make the already treacherous landing on
Southern Thule.
The team is excited and extremely motivated to do a
good job from these remote and rare islands. Our full
focus is on amateur radio
and making as many contacts as possible with the
Global DX Community. We will use proven techniques to
maximize the number of unique call
signs in our logs.
Our W6/W7 Pilot Relay Station is Chuck-AA6G. He
will relay reports to us on a daily basis of when and
how we are being heard
on the West Coast. At times, we will need to ask
the West Coast to QRX so that we can check propagation
to VK/ZL and JA/Asia.
Out of turn callers will have difficulty working
us.
Given how well we are hearing VP8NO right now, we
are confident that propagation on the higher bands is
good. We also plan to make
a major effort on the low bands, with four square
antenna arrays on 30, 40 and 80 meters. We will work
very intensively on 160 meters
with our phased vertical arrays.
We will make every effort to upload our logs to
Clublog each day. Our Inmarsat satellite provider
tells us that Inmarsat is not reliable below 55
degrees and we will be camped at 59 degrees South,
while on Southern Thule Island.
We are extremely grateful for all Foundation, Club
and Individual sponsors and donors. We sincerely hope
to satisfy the need for South Sandwich and South
Georgia contacts.
See you in the pileups!
Paul N6PSE
Co-Leader, VP8STI/VP8SGI