TopBand: P29VXX on 160

[Joerg Puchstein, YB1AQS]

AA11189
Sender: owner-topband@contesting.com
Precedence: bulk
X-Sponsor: N4VJ / K4AAA, KM3T, N5KO & AD1C

Dear fellow top-op's,
after paying the last 1000 $$$ for our 120 pounds of access baggage
we're back from PNG with in total 400 CW and 11 SSB QSO's w/o dupes in our
P29VXX topband-log. Op's were Dietmar DL3DXX and Joerg YB1AQS sharing
the nights 50/50. We were staying at the Misima Guesthouse on Misima Island
in the  South-Eastern part of PNG, already near to H44 (IOTA: OC-117).

Great conditions around the CQWWDX 160m SSB weekend were followed by very
rustrating nights with an Bolder A index of nearly 20. Nevertheless we've 
attched some 60 Eu's and even some more Eastcoast/'Black Hole', both nearly
10,000 miles away from here.
The conditions into Eu just ended up at a line from OH/SM via SP/DL/OM into
S5/9A/I. The western part was 'non-existing' for us. For the North-East of
the USA and Canada we got at least one good opening during our stay.
We've again used the Titanex V80E (20.5m / 68ft) with an additional 2-wire
topload. Our new radial system has proofed to be very functional at both
locations and saves us in the future some pounds of access baggage and
frustration laying out the radials (now 160m wire elevated instead of 700m
on ground).

The dupesheet will be published in a separate mail. Unfortunately again our
own calls are missing :-)

Many ops lost there chance due to there missing sensibility and cleverness.
The average signal level here was S4..5, the average static noise level at our
local evening S9+10. The static crashes were sometimes up to 15 s long with
only some hundred ms of pause in between. I've been here around for a while but
this was the worst QRN I've heard sofar.
Unfortunately we couldn't erect a beverage this time, only a very low hanging
halfwave-dipole gave us a little more S/N ratio.

Two major mistakes made by a lot of stations:

1. Calling with other stations exactly on the same frequency.
   There is no chance to copy even a piece of any callsign. It's waste of time
   and energy. Calling 200Hz or even 1kHz beside our given split frequency is
   no problem for us here in the very empty part of the pacific, we'll catch
   everybody.

2. Calling very fast and only one/two times.
   Even if it sounds sometimes like the 20m band - 160m isn't easy at all.
   That you here us very well doesn't mean the same for us. You will not hear
   any of the QRN we have here shortly after sunset when you're at your sunrise.

The discipline was really apprechiated, thank's for that. Some exceptions
calling us continuously without listening, even across ongoing qso's with
other stations or disturbingly on our transmitting frequencies are well recorded
and of course didn't find the way in our log. Some even made 'ghost'-qso's
with somebody - definitely not with us!

Nevertheless we've enjoyed or journey to S2 and P2 very much. I guess with
in total 1400 QSO's on 160, 4500 on 80 and 6400 on 40 from both locations we
again reached our main goal to serve the low bands. 

BTW, we would apprechiate to get some recordings of our signals on 80/160,
on tape with the qsl or via i-net as compressed .wav-file would be ok.

Once again, the QSL-info (like always - QSL via the German QSL bureau
preferred):

S21XX  - via DL3NEO, 
             Hannes Schmidt
             Komotauer Str. 28 B
             D-91207 Lauf
             Germany

P29VXX - via DL7UFN,
             Juergen Maerz
             Glambecker Ring 7
             D-12679 Berlin-Marzahn
             Germany


Thank's everybody again,

where do we go next ? ......


vy 73

Joerg for the crew

S21XX / P29VJP (op P29VXX) / YB1AQS





--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/topband.html
Submissions:              topband@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  topband-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-topband@contesting.com
Sponsored by:             Akorn Access, Inc. & N4VJ / K4AAA