News
2024-10-27
Information from Jacek SP5EAQ:"The expedition to Niue has been going on for 5 days now. Upon arrival, it turned out that due to the extended (unofficially) Constitution Day, all the shops were closed. At the petrol station (the only source of food) I bought drinking water, butter and eggs. Then I drove in a rented car to the place where I was to spend almost three weeks. I met up with the sister of the owner of the cottage. The owner lives in New Zealand. It was a good thing I thought about supplies, because the only things in the kitchen of the cottage were coffee and wet sugar. That same evening I set up the antenna (multiband SP7GXP vertical) and made the first hundred contacts. For the next few days I worked on bands intensively, and then I devoted the whole weekend to the CQ WW DX contest, where I worked exclusively on 10 meters where the conditions were fantastic. I only went to the lower bands occasionally, when someone asked me for a multiplier. This decision was forced by constant power outages. There were fewer of them during the day, when 10 meters was wide open. I made much less QSOs than I expected, but still had many power outages. Unfortunately, I also had an antenna failure, but the problem turned out to be the Amphenol plug at the end of the coax, which corroded within a few days (salt from the ocean). From tomorrow (end of the contest) I will be more active everywhere and I will watch all the sunsets and sunrises for 40m work. At other times I will be active (as usual only SSB) on higher bands. I have not set the delta for 80 m yet."