ZL3GA, ZL3AB, ZL4TT, ZL3PAH will be active from Norfolk Island (IOTA OC-005) 25 September - 8 October 2016 as VK9NZ.
They will operate on 160 - 6m.
QSL via ZL3PAH, OQRS, LOTW.
Ads for direct QSL:
Phil HOLLIDAY, 131 Starnes Road, RD 2, Upper Moutere 7175, New Zealand.
VK9NZ News 5 October 2016
On Sunday we farewelled Mark ZL3AB and welcomed Don ZL3DMC.
Solar conditions for the Oceania SSB DX Contest were disappointing, with a lot of CQing with little return.
We have had some good runs on 12m and 10m the last two days as the ionosphere settles down again. Good enough that we could work some SSB and RTTY which are the modes we are trying to maximise due to demand.
Our first attempt at 160m went well with over 100 stations in the log, from EU and NA and of course, OC. We intend to ride the grayline again tonight (Tuesday local time) and then do one more night on 160m. The last couple of days we will be back on 80m. They share the same antenna, an 18m Spiderpole with a top-loading wire for 160m.
Western EU has been our focus as that is where the need for VK9N is greatest. One of the main reasons being that it's a long (>17,000km) tough polar path. We'll continue to work hard on this during the week propagation permitting.
Dupes are a problem, they are currently running at ~5%. Every dupe worked means an ATNO or band/slot that can't be worked and it is really frustrating to spend time pulling out a weak signal from the pile, only to find it is a dupe. We are uploading to both Clublog and QSO Director in real-time and backing this up with manual uploads to Clublog several times each day. There is no need for "insurance" QSOs and no need to work us on the same bands every day.
We will start packing up Saturday morning local time and will close down the last station at lunchtime (8 Oct 0000z) to complete packing. We fly back to New Zealand first thing Sunday morning.
The QSO total has just passed 15,000, well short of our target. However we didn't plan on having an A Index over 20 for most of the time either!
We remain in good spirits but fatigue is definitely starting to set in.
The VK9NZ Team
Kingfisher, Norfolk Island. Author - John Gubbins.