Tonight is my last night in Eleuthera. The station is down and packed. Early flight tomorrow. Writing this while it’s still in my head.
Operations started March 24. First QSO at 1930 UTC. I ran digital first, and 15 meters came alive after 2330 UTC with a lot of JA. That kept going into the next day. I wrapped around 0200 UTC.
March 25 started early. Strong JA pileups on 40 meters FT8 around 0800 UTC. Later in the morning I was getting into the microwave and the laptop, and 20 meters was unusable. I moved the antenna from about 40 feet to about 90 feet from the cottage, which fixed most of it. Power line noise on SSB all day. Still worked about 200 SSB contacts on 15 meters, with intense European pileups.
March 26 was the strongest day. Pileups on 40, 20, and 15, with multiple FT8 and FT4 streams at once. SSB started with about 200 contacts on 15 meters. For the first time I used split as the DX and I can tell you, it makes a huge improvement! Another roughly 200 SSB contacts on 20 meters simplex later in the day, which worked well for North America.
March 27 was different. Early 40 meter FT8 was a slog: a lot of incompletes, mostly stuck on a single stream. Sometimes they could hear me and I couldn’t hear them, sometimes the reverse. I went sightseeing and came back later, then had strong European pileups on 15 meter FT4 for a couple of hours. Digital ended about 1.5 hours before CQ WPX SSB started.
March 28, an M-class flare had already gone off. At 0330 UTC the noise was awful. I came back around 1130 UTC, worked 40, 20, and 15 until about 1400 UTC, then went back to digital. Noise stayed high all day, probably the sun. During CQ WPX SSB I made an unintentional self-spot and noticed it about 15 minutes later. I submitted the log as a checklog Saturday afternoon and stayed out of the contest for the rest of the weekend.
March 29 was one of the highlights. Overnight I got an email from JR7HAN asking to try 20 meter JA around 1200 UTC. I started a bit early at 1100 UTC and worked a lot of Japanese stations, then QSYed to 14086. At peak I had three FT8 streams going. Commercial power died around 1800 UTC for the rest of the day.
March 30 I did a POTA activation of BS-0044 at the Queen’s Baths. Spectacular spot. The Atlantic was putting on a show. Rain on and off, and I still got the 13 contacts. Packed up completely soaked. Back at the QTH I ran FT8 and FT4 for a bit around 1900 UTC, then tore the station down for good. Last QSO at 2054 UTC.
First DXpedition. Close to 6000 QSOs. The IC-705, JUMA PA-1000+, and the vertical did the job.
I can’t wait until the next one.