Hi gang- I had the pleasure of operating from A73A last week - exclusively on 160 meters.
I was able to operate the full night before the contest on CW. I put about 300 stations in the log - including two USA stations (K1UO and N4IS). On SSB, I worked over 400 stations with VE1ZZ being my only North American QSO. I had hoped to get on after the contest for a couple of hours on CW - but we had a storm which made the band pretty much useless for the end of the contest and after. Our TX antenna was a 66 foot vertical with a top loading wire. It had two elevated radials and was about 20 feet from the edge of the ocean. It had a clear shot to the Northwest through Northeast which is where most of the signals come from. I say "had" because within about 4 hours after the finish of the contest - all of our antennas were down and packed away. This was totally a field day style operation (as in years past). On receive - I initially tried a BOG - or perhaps I should say a beverage about six inches high. This appeared to have directivity based upon observations of the AM radio stations during the daytime - but didn't seem to really help much at night. For the contest - we also had a pair of K9AY loops - in phase - 1/2 wave apart - and those were better than the beverage. During times - I think I was hearing pretty well - but then we had storms that seemed to start up around local midnight and the band got very noisy (pinning the S meter on the TX antenna). I think I will try this same arrangement of K9AY loops at home and see how they compare to my current RX antennas. On 80 meters - we had a 4 square - again - right at the waters edge. It was about 200M away from the 160 antenna. For the CW A71CV QSOs - I have the logs and will email an electronic copy to A71CV to hopefully get posted to LOTW. The A73A QSLs appear to be via EA7FTR per the QRZ.COM web page. It was certainly interesting operating 160 meters from the other side of the world. I hope to do a bit more of this as my current work assignment has me coming to Asia on a semi-regular basis. I'll be operating the SS CW using remote control while sitting in my hotel room here in Bangalore. 73 Tree N6TR _______________________________________________ Topband reflector - [email protected]
