Well according to their QRZ page the CY9C DXPedition to St Paul Island is now underway. The operation started on August 26th and will finish on September 5th 2024.

Here is a link to their website for those of you who want more info…

I saw them spotted on the cluster (20m CW working split) and decided to give it a try. Carefully set up the split wanted (I went up 4) and then confirmed that my trusty decoder could easily decode their CW (sent at 35wpm???)

I set my contest keyer in my Yaesu FT991a at 30wpm and then hit memory 1 on the keyer. NO Luck…. after about 3 minutes of sending my call out I finally heard back VA3QV 5nn.

I glanced at the screen to confirm what I had heard and also quickly hit memory 2 and 5nn ON was sent out. Right after that I heard TU and the screen again confirmed what I had heard…

Just for giggles I checked the Club Log for CY9C and to my surprise I found the following:

Gotta love it when a DXPedition promptly uploads their logs….

Now to be honest St Pauls Island is not exactly “rare DX” at a distance of just over 800 miles I know that I will get them on one of the bands…

Todays attempt was just quicker than I expected and in a different mode.

This afternoon (1500 utc) CY9C was spotted on 15m CW and I thought I would try again as I needed CY9 on 15m for my feeble attempts at 5 band DXCC.

It was a ZOO between the lids who can’t understand what “UP” means and the DX Cops who insist on explaining to the lid what UP means there was no chance of me hearing the reply if they actually heard me (I was up 4-8) …

Well I got a few days but at least I got them once.

73bob

Well according to their QRZ page the CY9C DXPedition to St Paul Island is now underway. The operation started on August 26th and will finish on September 5th 2024.

Here is a link to their website for those of you who want more info…

I saw them spotted on the cluster (20m CW working split) and decided to give it a try. Carefully set up the split wanted (I went up 4) and then confirmed that my trusty decoder could easily decode their CW (sent at 35wpm???)

I set my contest keyer in my Yaesu FT991a at 30wpm and then hit memory 1 on the keyer. NO Luck…. after about 3 minutes of sending my call out I finally heard back VA3QV 5nn.

I glanced at the screen to confirm what I had heard and also quickly hit memory 2 and 5nn ON was sent out. Right after that I heard TU and the screen again confirmed what I had heard…

Just for giggles I checked the Club Log for CY9C and to my surprise I found the following:

Gotta love it when a DXPedition promptly uploads their logs….

Now to be honest St Pauls Island is not exactly “rare DX” at a distance of just over 800 miles I know that I will get them on one of the bands…

Todays attempt was just quicker than I expected and in a different mode.

This afternoon (1500 utc) CY9C was spotted on 15m CW and I thought I would try again as I needed CY9 on 15m for my feeble attempts at 5 band DXCC.

It was a ZOO between the lids who can’t understand what “UP” means and the DX Cops who insist on explaining to the lid what UP means there was no chance of me hearing the reply if they actually heard me (I was up 4-8) …

Well I got a few days but at least I got them once.

73bob

Anyone who chases DX can’t fail to have noticed that the Jarvis Island DXpedition is now on air and has been for less than 48 hours. I did have a listen yesterday but didn’t hear them anywhere. I set up HamAlert notifications specifically for N5J with the source set as G, GM and GW in […]

Update July 1, 2024. LoTW is back up! It is running slow, but it is available. Thank goodness.

--

When I wrote the article back in May, I hardly thought that LoTW would be down a month later.

Sadly, the outage continues. 

My suspicions were correct, however, that this was something more than a simple networking problem. The ARRL has since admitted their network was viciously and uniquely hacked. I can certainly understand their caution to make sure that every system linked to LoTW is given a clean bill of health before turning the system back on.

Earlier this week, on Tuesday there was apparently a brief period of time when LoTW was accessible. A couple of my ham buddies managed to upload some contacts. They'll have to wait for confirmations when the rest of us can get in.

I do hope it is soon. I'm really missing this service.

FT4GL Automation. So how can it be this automated FT8 operation from Glorioso (FT4GL) has been approved for DXCC?

FT8 has been a revolution. The technology has made DXing really easy. Or has it? I continue to be amazed at how much difficulty people have working DXpeditions on FT8. 

Last year, there were DXpeditions to Bouvet (3Y0J), Crozet (FT8WW) and Sable Islands (CY0S). The most recent DXpedition to Glorioso Islands (FT4GL) has brought it all back to me.

Let's start off with a few observations on people trying to work these DXpeditions:

• Wrong Cycle - It's amazing the number of folks trying to work DX that are calling on the wrong cycle. FT8 has even and odd cycles. Even cycles start at 00 or 30 seconds, and odd cycles start on 15 and 45 seconds. You always call on the cycle the DX station is NOT transmitting. Indeed, if you double-click on a decode of the DX station, WSJT-X will set up the correct cycle. So how are people getting it wrong?

May 16th, there was an issue with Logbook of The World (LoTW). I could not load the main page at all -- receiving an error indicating the server wasn't responding.

That's pretty normal stuff, actually. There are dozens of problems that can result in this kind of error, so I wasn't surprised. I figured the ARRL staff would address it quickly. But, after much of the day, I was still getting the error. 

So, I sent a message to lotw-help@arrl.org, informing them that the web site wasn't responding, kindly asking when they expected it to be back up. I mentioned I was surprised there was no notice of the outage on the ARRL.org web site.

Later that day, the ARRL put up a notice that there was a service disruption involving access to the network, and that it affected LoTW and the ARRL Learning Center. They even updated it the next day, addressing concerns users had over information privacy.

But then, nothing happened. Not until May 22nd, when they updated the notice without really adding any information. 

Now, part of this delay may be due to the fact that much of the ARRL staff were all out at the Xenia Hamvention. But, that was a week ago.

What gives? Sure, networking problems. Honestly, though, as a computer professional, networking problems generally don't take more than a week to solve. I'm beginning to suspect there's something more than the ARRL hasn't told us, but I can't be sure.

I'm really missing access to LoTW. In the last 20 years, it has really become central in my enjoyment of the hobby. I do hope I'm wrong, and that ARRL manages to fix this problem soon.

FT4GL Glorioso On The Air! Well, "Kinda". That's funny. I just pulled the Club Log stats. Don't even need to explain (.0007). Those that know, know! hahahaha!

DXer vs. TXTer. They are not the same. Dom, T32TT calling N0UN on "Phone" from East Kiribati: (video). Guess this picture says it all: Lazy is, as lazy does.

A friendly reminder for all you Lazy, Mindless, Automated Computer Scripted Text Messengers out there - you want to RR73 the virtues of FT8 from the rooftops

When I saw the spot from W3LPL's DX Cluster skimmer for XV9Q, I thought there's absolutely ZERO chance I'd hear Viet Nam on 30 Meters CW at 9:00 AM our local time. But what do I know?

It’s been a while since I posted any updates here, not because I’ve got nothing to say but because I’ve been busy working on the station and playing radio. My new aerial is up but I’m not going to say anything about that now, that’s for a future update. I’ve had a good year so […]

Twenty years ago, when I first started uploading my logs to Logbook of the World, I began to pursue the DXCC Challenge award. I created lists of confirmations that I had, and began to try to fill in the band / countries I was missing. This has continued for years. 

In April of 2016, I gathered sufficient confirmations to earn the DXCC Challenge award. Since then, I've continued to pursue new band / countries practically every time I am on the air.

This month, I passed another milestone. Currently, there are 340 entities on the DXCC list. And the DXCC Challenge counts on ten bands, from 160m through 6m. That makes 3400 total items for DXCC Challenge. 

I recently collected confirmations over 1700 items on the DXCC Challenge. That's the half-way point. It's only going to get harder after this.

7O8AE & 7O8AD Yemen DXpedition. A two man low power DXpedition from a rare DXCC Entity with an emphasis on CW & Phone with the CW Op running FT8 on the side.

DXpeditioners have figured out they can turn on their automated FT8 computer scripts and make more money than actually operating their Ham Radios on Phone or CW