Topband: S9OK operation

[Wes]

I worked them last night @0422.  Pretty amazing operators. They were readable 
about an hour earlier but lots of QRM so I gave up.  When I came back they were 
a bit stronger with some fades and I could see the traffic was lower; they were 
actually CQing at times.  Looked to me like they were listening 1 to 2 up, 
mostly up 2 judging by the pileup on the bandscope.  I dropped down 50 Hz from 
there and worked them with a couple of insurance repeats.  Nice to see the 
(near) real time log pop up with your call.  If I had a gripe it's that they 
need to QRS.

Rig here is just a single-RX TS890 to a KPA500 and a 55' Inverted L used for 
both TX and RX.  Conventional wisdom says you can't possibly work TB DX with 
this stuff. :-)

Also this AM (~1200Z) started the season with easy contacts with two of the 
usual suspects, JH1HDT and HL5IVL.

Wes  N7WS


On 10/8/2021 7:12 AM, W3HKK at roadrunner.com wrote:
> Thursday was the charm as I got them in my log ( and theirs) on
> 40-30-80-160 cw. Nice to see their almost instantaneous log confirming
> qso's and eliminating the need to work them 2-3-4-5 times to be sure.
> Nifty! They are new DXCC entities on both 80 and 160 for me.
>
> Its hard to track their tendencies but going to their Clublog website
> once I discovered it made things much easier. Still, the first few
> days I couldnt keep up with their listening freq gyrations because I
> often couldnt hear the stations they were working through the QRN.
> Things improved Thursday and that made a big diff.
>
> For 160 cw, their sigs begin to peak around 0430z here in central
> Ohio. QRN is still running high so that peak makes all the difference.
> Their SR is around 0518z. Sometimes they QSY from cw around 0500z.
>
> Was surprised to see how many qsos theyve made. Nice job S9OK ops!
>
> Note their tear down begins two days before they go QRT. So we have
> another week or so to work them.
>
> Great to have a dxpedition back on the air. This was my first new ne
> on TB since Covid began.
>
> _________________
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