- ----- Original Message -----
- From: N7MAL
- To: dx-news@njdxa.org
- This xpedition also helped amplify some of the problems. Yes they did a 'bang-up' job, and yes they did it under horrible, grueling, conditions. But, they also added to the 'on-the-air' problems by wasting hours upon hours on 160, 80, & 40 trying to work Europe after 0700Z when all of Europe is in bright sunlight.
If I have one criticism of the Peter1 operation it's how 40m CW was handled. The rest was fantastic! Great ops for the most part, patient, loud and always on the air somewhere. They had a generally pretty good grasp on propagation, what was open to where, when, etc. I wish they'd have spent a little more time on 10 and 12, but no biggie there -- why waste resources when there's only limited prop.
As for working EU in sunlight. they *were* working them, so there obviously was propagation.
With that said, I do think they could have maybe put their absolutely best operators on 40 CW, maybe starting earlier and ending later. 40's a great band and there's usually prop. somewhere on it. Even during the day they might have been able to work a few CEs, LUs and PYs to lessen the load at night.
My questions about 40 with 3Y0X are these:
1) Since it's obvious that 40 CW was the most in-demand band/mode, and since they said they had filtering in place to allow multiple stations on one band, why not field two stations on 40 CW? One at 7005 and one around 7095 or so? One for EU one for NA during the overlap hours from 1600 to around 0300, then one for NA and one for JA after about 0300 or so until 40 dies to Peter 1 around 0700?
and/or
2) I'm fairly certain that 3Y0X is in ITU Region 2, where privileges on 40 generally extend to 7300, not 7100. (120 degrees West longitude is the beginning of Region 3 and Peter 1 is about 90W or so) -- Why not have an op on either SSB or CW above 7150 to work exclusively those countries that have privileges above 7100? This frees up JA/Europe below 7100 and gives the Americas the upper bits of the band. Sure, they'd have to play "Dodge the Broadcasters" but that's better than the mess we were treated to on or about 7023 for the last 2 weeks, don't you think?
The only thing I could think of is that the 3Y0X frequency restrictions were those of mainland Norway, in Region 1, but that's just speculation on my part.
I do think a few of the ops let the pileups get out of control by never ever giving an operating range over the air, instead just saying "up," and then letting the pile grow to 30 kHz. For CW?? A little excessive IMHO. Also, when it was obvious things were getting hairy on 40 CW, there was no attempt that I could ever discern to go by numbers.
I will conclude by saying again that beyond doubt, this was one of the best DXpeditions I've ever worked and I have a substantial donation going off in the mail on Tuesday. The comments voiced above are hopefully intended to give suggestions to the next group who plan to go someplace exotic to help them avoid this one problem. I think my all-time favourite group for pileup control from an exotic QTH are the MicroLite Penguins who did a fantastic job from FT5XO last year.
Thanks to all and sundry for a lot of fun, eight new bands, three modes and 20 Q's!
W2IRT
