Well, I had the chance to go over to W3WH's QTH last night for a few hours to try and work 3Y0X. A very strange feeling... his Corsair II, my favorite rig, was absent (out for a VFO rebuild at Ten-Tec), his IC-706 was packed up for the VP2MWH op starting next week, and his antennas had suffered some critter damage to the coax, so the station wasn't operating at "full" strength. Yes, I had to suffer with "only" the Orion to operate...
Spent most of the 2+ hours (from about 0015 - 0230 Z) on 30. 3Y0X had, for the most part, a clear signal. Signal strength sometimes faded, but I could always hear them. And no QRM (unlike the 20 minutes or so I spent on 20 phone listening, seemed that they picked the International Tune-Up frequency to transmit on). I've noticed a few complaints that some of the 3Y ops aren't ID'ing enough. All I could tell you is that the ops I listened too did ID every few minutes, sometimes after almost every QSO. Biggest problem? Finding the pile-up. The ops were only sending "up," and the few spots that I saw (most of the cluster spots were for the RTTY contest) showed them QRV anywhere from 8 to 20 kHz up. Even when we finally did find the pile-up (and by "we" I mean W3WH and W9UK/VP2MUK, who were working on the final packing coordination for the trip), we didn't hear too many stations calling. I don't know if it was conditions, or the antenna situation or what... but while 3Y0X had a steady stream of contacts, we just didn't hear the other end that well. No, I didn't work them. But there's time yet. Just the fact that I could hear them on a regular basis is a good start. Now, since K3VX/VP2MVX just gave me my Cushcraft vertical back, and I now have some coax buried into the back yard, maybe I will get a shot at them direct this week... 73, ron wn3vaw Subscribe/unsubscribe, feedback, FAQ, problems http://njdxa.org/dx-chat To post a message, DX related items only, [email protected] This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org
