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| DXpedition - Namibia 2009 |
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NAMIBIA, V5, EME DXpedition January 2009 V5/KT6Q was QRV from moonrise on 8th to moonset on 18th January 2009. QTH was Luderitz, Namibia at Diaz Point, grid locator JG73NI.
EME QSL: please send your QSL to HB9Q, P.O.box 133, CH-5737 Menziken, Switzerland Please include SASE. Any contribution, even small ones are very much appreciated and will be forwarded to the project “EME for Africa” (read below for more information)! Many thanks!
For the photos please visit our Photogallery at http://www.hb9q.ch/photo/main.php?g2_itemId=3223
Namibia 2009 Summary
Team members: ZS6OB Pine and XYL Erika, ZS6WB Hal, ZS6JR Daniel, N7BHC Dave (transatlantic-tropo-ducting), Bob (the driver and owner of the minibus), HB9CRQ/KT6Q Dan (team-leader) Mission: Activate Namibia on 144, 432 and 1296 EME, second priority 50 EME and satellite. Dave, N7BHC asked if he may join the team to try to contact Brazil via transatlantic-tropo-ducting. Preparing the DXpedition: Pine and Hal prepared in a huge effort all equipment for 144, 432, 50 and satellite. Dan did bring the 1296 equipment (thanks Bodo, DL3OCH, for letting us use your equipment). The project “EME for Africa” allowed us to use their equipment (trailer, antennas, mast, TRX). Hal and Pine did add private equipment to complete the EME stations. Getting to Luderitz, Namibia: Since we had that much equipment to carry we travelled by road. We had one minibus towing the 144 EME trailer and one pick-up truck towing the second trailer. The roundtrip was 3200 km for a driving time of 40 hours in 4 days, 2 days each way. Diaz Point, Luderitz, Namibia, JG73ni: Luderitz is on the Atlantic cost just south of the Namib Dessert. Nestled in a very nice bay the town still has its German tough. To get to Diaz Point we drove 20 km on an unpaved road. At Diaz Point (about 2km west of Luderitz) there is just one house which is available for rent, a second house which will be renovated, one very nice café, a couple other buildings (unmanned weather-station), a few camp-sites and the light-house. To rent the house contact Bay View Hotel at www.luderitzhotels.com The landscape of Diaz Peninsula looks like the moon-surface. Hills of black rugged lava, different rock-formations, sand and only very few small plants make it a very special and mystic place! Diaz Point is surrounded almost 360° by the Atlantic Ocean, only a narrow double-sided-sand-beach connects it to the peninsula. Lot of birds, seals and dolphins can be spotted. If you visit Namibia, this is definitely a place you should see! Please go to Google Earth and search for Diaz Point Luderitz Namibia and you'll see our spectacular QTH! Equipment: 144 MHz: 4 x M2 2M9SSB yagis with az and el rotators. TE Systems 280W. ARR preamp. 432 MHz: 8 x M2 432EME-12 yagis manually rotated. TE Systems 160 watt. ARR preamp. 1296 MHz: 1 x 59el yagi manually rotated. 90W. No preamp. Problems to solve: No power, only solar cells and one car battery on site, despite the written confirmation we had, confirming Diaz Point does have 220V power-service (the travel agent did a very poor job!). The owner of the Bay View Hotel (who runs the Diaz Point accommodation and café) and his staff did help us to get a generator. Many thanks Willem and Team! Never the less we still were limited in operation since we would have needed more energy to operate 3 EME stations plus the tropo station at the same time. 144 MHz TRX: power-supply went QRT when switched on first time. We had to use another TRX for 144 EME, fortunately we did bring an extra TRX with us. However we had to change several plugs/connectors (interface, sequencer) to have it operate on JT and CW. Although we had a lot of surplus material, it was not easy to put together what was needed. 144 19xxxm2 and 50 5el yagi crashed during tower erection because the iron-cable which pulls-up the tower let go. Therefore 50 MHz EME was not possible anymore, and we also lost the main 144 antenna for the tropo-ducting test. Fortunately no one was hurt! 144 preamp burned during first attempt to work CW on 144. We had a switching problem since we were not using the RTX we planned to use. Fortunately we had a spare preamp. The 144 CW QSO with Finn, LA8YB was done without preamp. During several days we had to stand gusty winds peaking more than 100 km/h. Blowing sand everywhere, the shack was covered with sand! To avoid damage we had to lower the antennas to ground several times. 144 MHz cross-yagi for satellite was damaged due to a very strong wind gust, so satellite activity was limited to the handheld antenna and the egg-biters. Hal, ZS6WB did his best to work as many stations as possible. Several smaller problems with computers and RF equipment, which could be solved, however we spent a lot of time to do it. Due to all this problems, we had to cut-back on some of the activities: we could only be QRV simultaneously on 2 EME bands (not 3 as planed), no 50 MHz activity at all, less QRV-time for the tropo-ducting test and satellite activity and less CW activity than planned. Moon conditions: We had very good conditions during first moon-window on 8th of January. The screen was full of callers! We counted up to 18 stations at the same time! The following day’s conditions became more and more difficult. We had more lock-out time each moon-path, and one-way-conditions for more and more hours. We did not rx any station for hours, but our own echo was most of the time very strong. Every now and then we had stations calling us with excellent signal, but they did not respond when we called them with report, did they rx us at all? Most of the time, when we could work stations, they were very strong. The worked stations had an average signal-strength of -19! Only few stations were weaker than -25. For more detail see the log below. Hal and Pine confirmed that they experience a lot of lock-outs and one-way conditions from their home-QTH. It looks like this is not unusual down here. Unfortunately we had no vertical antenna, this may have helped us to make even more QSOs. EME Results: 144: 231 initials, 47 DXCC, 230 JT65 and 1 CW 432: 18 initials, 13 DXCC, 16 JT65 and 5 CW 1296: 18 initials, 12 DXCC, 17 JT and 1 CW We are very happy with the 144 result, our system worked perfectly. On 432 we have expected to work many more stations! The system seemed to perform okay, we had the impression that there was just lack of interest/activity!?! We only worked stations we could have worked using just 1 yagi! This of course is not very motivating for DXpeditions to do an effort and use several or even many yagis. The 1296 result is slightly better than what we expected. Although we could have worked many more if they would have tried to work us. Don't forget, 2.4m dish and 300W are enough for an easy QSO! QSLing: All EME QSL please to HB9Q, Box 133, CH-5737 Menziken, Switzerland Please include SASE. Any contribution, even small ones are very much appreciated and will be forwarded to the project “EME for Africa”! Many thanks! We will have picture QSLs printed. Hope to have them by the end of February. Please be patient! We periodically update the log with the QSL received. Photo Gallery: Will be added mid February.
Many thanks! Erika did all the cooking for us! We had great food! Many thanks Erika! Hal and Pine many thanks for all the work, effort and time you put into our DXpedition. Daniel, many thanks for driving us save to Luderitz and back and for all the support you gave us on site! Dave, many thanks for putting up the internet connection for us! Bob, many thanks for driving us save to Luderitz and back and for all the support during our DXpedition! William, Johan and Joan, many thanks for your support on site! "EME for Africa", many thanks for letting us use your equipment! The SARL South African Radio League The PARC Pretoria Amateur Radio club Multisource Icom Distributor for IC-910H MBT South Africa [ZS6BUN, Dick] for EME trailer Frosty K5LBU & USA sponsors of elevation rotator WYNAND ZS6ARF for optimizing radio equipment and Technical assistance Trusty V51TT for helping with the guest license MMMonVHF.de, Guy, for posting all our updates and keeping the EME community informed And last but not least, many thanks to all of you calling us! Project "EME for Africa": Any donation to the project "EME for Africa" will help them to activate more countries in and around South Africa. They also make the equipment available to visitors! For donations and more information please contact Pine at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
Dan, V5/KT6Q (HB9CRQ) For the Namibia 2009 DXpedition-Team
Stations worked, QSL received and QSL sent:
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