TX5K – Clipperton Island / LoTW

I was very pleased with myself when I worked TX5K during the expedition.

When I looked at the QSL info on their web site and on QRZ.com they made it abundantly clear that they were going to use LoTW. There was no mention of time constraints either.

It has been six months since the DX expedition and they have as yet not uploaded their logs to LoTW.

I decided to play it safe and used the Club Log OQRS system to request a paper QSL card. This was 2 weeks ago. I followed up with an email to see if a QSL card was dispatched and I got no response from them.

With all the frustrations of getting QSOs confirmed, I am starting to think maybe I should consider a change of policy. Forget about getting QSOs confirmed. I know what I worked and what I haven’t worked, that should be sufficient. The chase remains the same the only difference is that I don’t have a piece of paper to hang on the wall. Is it really that important anyway?

FWIW I think It is only a matter of time before all the clusters will show (flag) who uses LoTW and who does not, for example DX For Me cluster.

IMHO The DX chasers will in time ignore the non-users of LoTW and only chace the known users of LoTW.

http://dxfor.me/

<Rant_Off>

Club Log - Amazing online tool

I only recently discovered the potential of CLUBLOG

https://secure.clublog.org/index.php

This is an amazing facility. It offers much more than checking ones progress whilst chasing a particular DX expedition i.e. ticking boxes.

The embedded statistical tools are great to analyse info after a DX expedition.  The stats reveal a great deal of interesting information.

Have a look at e.g. 3B9EME using the statistics tool: Expeditions / 3B9EME / Statistics

One can also upload one’s own log to Club log; this is where the fun starts. It offers a host of log management facilities such as keeping track of entities worked, confirmed and verified etc.

In addition to all the lists above it produces a host of fancy graphs and other statistical information.

Most important of all, this serves as an online backup ADIF backup of your precious log. The one on the PC which we never backup until it is too late.

ISCAT vs. JT6M and WSJT-X

I have been playing with the new WSJT-X program. The interface is absolutely fantastic. The use of colours makes it very easy to use. It requires much less concentration.

It looks and feels much like the JT65-HF interface, but it is still 100% the WSJT as we know it from the popular versions 7 and 9.

WSJT-X will hopefully soon include: JT4, ISCAT and FSK441 modes in the program suite.

It sure would be great if we could revive the local 6m early morning digital activity we had a while back.  We should be comparing JT6M and SCAT  with each other during typical weak signal scatter work, possibly with enhancements due to aircraft scatter / meteor reflections.

We know that FSK441 reigns champion during the very short Meteor Scatter pings, but that is not really weak signal stuff. Generally the reflections are fairly strong, but the reflection very short in duration in the order of a few milliseconds.

Hal ZS6WB and I played with ISCAT this morning and it seems as if ISCAT is suitable for aircraft scatter work.

Hal’s antenna was pointing south west and my antenna was beaming west (at 90 degrees to the left). The images below show that decodes are possible from strong short reflection as well as the typical longer reflections we see from aircraft.

The best (weakest) decode was at -20 dB:

073200   0 -20 28.2  194   0    ZS6A ZS6WB KG44               16  4 10  2.2

Mission impossible – EP3SMH QSL

A while back I sent Seyed a QSL card, I included a SAE, 9 green stamps and an IRC. Apparently this letter never arrived.

I decided to try again and resent a letter with: SAE, 10 green stamps and an IRC and sent via registered mail.

The same letter was returned to me almost 2 months later. No reason given for the non-delivery (images below).

In the mean time I see on QRZ.com that Seyed now requires 16 green stamps.

I don’t wish to speculate as to what the problem is, but one thing is for sure. I won’t be wasting my time, money or effort in pursuing this confirmation any further.

All this unpleasantness could be avoided if these problem stations used either LoTW or made use of a QSL manager.

Images below can be enlarged by clicking on them.

 

Magic Band – Reality check

The last few days I have been looking at my 6m logs try and determine what I still needed to complete my 6m DXCC.

I have come to the conclusion that it very unlikely if not impossible for me to reach that elusive goal. Cycle 24 is almost a thing of the past and I will most likely be retired and living about 1000 km south of my existing QTH during the next peak. This will without doubt exclude me from operating via 6m Trans Equatorial Propagation (TEP) since it very seldom reaches that far south.

There is one other alternative, which is Sporadic-E and Tropo to African countries or the Islands surrounding Africa within 6m range. This however presents another problem. The Magic Band is generally not well supported in Africa. The image below is testament to that fact.

I have 55 DXCC countries confirmed on 6m and only 4 of them are in Africa, this is excluding South Africa and one EME QSO with Lance W7GJ the remaining stations are from mainly Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

ZS6A 6M African countries worked

F2 openings on 6m are only a figment of an over active imagination. That is something the old timers talk about to make us jealous…….