Author - Tim Beaumont

As the 2021 – 2022 financial tax year comes to an end, it is time to take a look at how our mailing facility has worked over the last year. Overall  12,207 items of mail were posted at a cost of £13,298.42. We post QSL cards, bureau parcels and magazines using the various products as shown in the table above. During Covid times the costs were going up and up, but recently, since January we have seen costs fall, as new mailing products were introduced this year. The day to day QSL card mailings have dropped by 11p per item which is taking us back to the postal rates for letters before Covid. We  kept direct QSL costs the same during that time.
DX’pedition QSL costs are very competitive as always and we welcome talking to DX teams about mailing your QSL cards in the future.
Bureau costs remain higher due to the worldwide shipping freight capacity under constant high demand. As we prepare for the next Bureau dispatch we are trying to find ways to reduce those costs. The biggest challenge to Bureau shipments is the worldwide customs regulations where we are seeing many countries putting a customs tax on Bureau shipments. No word yet from IARU about this matter. One benefit of Brexit is that we no longer have to pay 20% tax on sending mail to EU countries a saving of £1k last year.
With solar cycle 25 packing a punch, we continue to provide top QSL support to all. 

As 85% of QSL’ers now use OQRS to request their QSL cards it is getting to the time when we will soon not accept incoming letters through the post here. The reason for this is that nearly all QSL’s coming in by post fail to include any costs for the return postage.
Please note that USA Global Stamps are ONLY VALID if you are posting the letter from the USA. It is no use to me here. UK stamps? NO i cannot use them here on our mailing account. No stamps.  
Please see the QSL Policy here: If you do not wish to abide by the QSL policy then i am sorry i cannot help you.

Using OQRS is the way forward it cuts out manual labour and your QSL will be in the post far quicker and secure.
Thank you for understanding.

The TX5N project is on schedule, planned to be on the air April 16 – April 28, 2022. 
Several last minute topics were discussed during a March 15th team meeting, including entry formalities for French Polynesia, the government’s required Covid documentation and the operator scheduling.

Start date: 24 February 2022
Latest update:24 February 2022
End date: To be advised
Incident Airspace currently unavailable

Latest update
Due to the rapidly developing situation in Ukraine we have been advised by the Ukrainian postal service (Ukrposhta) that Ukrainian airspace is now closed. We are working with the Ukrainian postal service and other postal partners to establish road routes into the country. We are still accepting items for Ukraine but please be advised that deliveries to all parts of the country are subject to unpredictable delays. We will provide further updates as soon as we receive them.

Press Release #8 from 3Y0J team – 08/02/2022  3Y0J DXpedition to Bouvet Island , January 2023

Since we signed the contract with Marama we have been working on fine tuning the dates and port of departure. Today we can confirm that the departure date for the 3Y0J DXpedition will be January 6th 2023. It is complex to plan the logistics of such a huge project like the 3Y0J Bouvet DXpedition which involves many parties. The new dates are mainly related to the Marama vessel logistics, but as well the new dates enable us to return to Cape Town in late February 2023. We can confirm the scheduled duration of the DXpedition is 44 days and that we have reserved a week additional contingency at the end giving us more flexibility. We have contracted 22 days at Bouvet Island, and it means we will spend more than 3 weeks at Bouvet. As we have the flexibility to still decide the port of departure Ushuaia or Port Stanley this will be done at a later stage.

It is with great pleasure we inform that we have completed all equipment selection for this trip.

For the station setup we will lineup 12 stations, that will include 8 human mode CW/SSB stations and 4 FT8 stations so to achieve our new goal of 200,000 QSOs. We will be using the Elecraft K3S, a well proven in the field DXpedition radio as the CW/SSB radio and SunSDR2 DX as the FT8 radio.

During peak time we will run up to 12 radios simultaneously by using 4O3A triplexers and InnovAntenna/Wimo tribanders together with Messi&Paoloni coax. We plan for minimum downtime on the radios, and to achieve this we will setup the 4 FT8 stations to run 24/7 so that these can either be run by one operator separately or be run by any other operator in a simplified SO2R setup. This will be done so that each operator can log into the FT8 machine from his operator position and run CW/SSB and FT8 simultaneously. Running several radios by a single operator this way has shown to be very efficient.

At Bouvet we are pleased to announce that we will use the well-known S.P.E. EXPERT amplifier. We will bring with us various models where the 1.5K-FA will be the main model, but for 160m we will be using a 2.0 kW amplifier and a vertical running a K3S with diversity RX. We will also have several spare amplifiers.

We are also pleased to inform that as the RX antenna system we will be using a ground independent RX loop system developed by LZ1AQ. This RX antenna will be located 300 meters away from the camp and will provide us with a RX antenna for 160-30m with 8xRX output signals. It also includes possibility to switch from loop to dipole mode.

We have procured 5 rugged YANMAR diesel generators to provide the station supply that will also include 1 spare generator.

Going to Bouvet is a huge undertaking financially and it would simply not be possible without the support from the vendors and our sponsors Expert Electronics, S.P.E., 4O3A, Messi&Paoloni and LZ1AQ. If you want to have the opportunity to work the rare #2 DXCC Bouvet island, please consider supporting us by donating upfront.

You can follow our plans from our website and the 3Y0J Facebook pages:
http://www.3y0j.no
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3093983840726129

Thank you, Oslo February 7th 2022
Ken Opskar LA7GIA, Co-Leader
Rune Oye LA7THA, Co-Leader
Erwann Merrien LB1QI, Co-Leader

Over the weekend of January 28th several TX5N team members met in Northern California to consolidate, test and pack the TX5N equipment for shipment to Raivavae, Austral Islands. After reviewing several transportation alternatives, we located a firm in Tahiti that will accept our shipment and transport it to the island via cargo ship.

We have approximately 1,000 pounds (450kg) of equipment on the way to Tahiti. The equipment inventory includes Elecraft transceivers and amplifiers, a Flex PGXL amplifier, two SteppIR BigIR antennas w/80 meters, various mono band VDAs, an NA4RR hex beam and a 160m vertical.

All team members have their airline and hotel reservations to Papeete, Tahiti with onward passage to Raivavae. The operating location will be Pension Tama Raivavae, a small inn which has hosted many previous DX-peditions.

Each team member will have a small bungalow, and radio operations will be conducted from a dedicated building on the beach. Most antennas will be beach mounted. Being on the north side of the island we expect good working conditions.

There are several photographs of the Equipment Weekend activity at: TX5N
We are on schedule for this April, 2022 project. 73, Team TX5N

With the significant changes to International mailings now being enforced by world Customs areas, it has meant that this also effects QSL management and i believe that we are the only QSL management team in the world that has been working with our national mail provider, Royal Mail, to discuss mailing solutions and secure access to the right products to keep the direct and bureau QSL cards posted.
The products that we had been using for many years were getting more expensive and were not suitable in the current Covid and customs climate.

Royal Mail had made the decision that these products were going to be removed and replaced by a new stream of mailing products that had to be accessed only by an online mailing solution to give us the correct customs clearance for the Bureau dispatches, however we urgently still require IARU to discuss a unique commodity code to reflect the “0” value at customs of QSL cards. It is quite clear that we are a long way off from this if it happens at all, the result of this no action is that Bureau boxes are now attracting TAX and handling fees around the world which some IARU Bureaus are failing to understand and refusing to pay the TAX and i have to say that I predicted this as far back as 2017, which begs the question why has no action been taken to secure the future of QSL’ing?

For “Direct QSL cards” we are proud to announce that we have secured access to a new mailing product which secures a better package for our daily mailing of direct QSL cards around the world. Prices are considerably more competitive and means that there will be no price rises for your QSL requests going forward into 2022. This is great news for those that enjoy QSl’ing and excellent news for DXpeditions using our QSL services. We are very confident that our UK QSL managers are the only worldwide QSL providers that work with our national providers to give you the best QSL service out there today.

Kapp Linné – Isfjord Radio

Finally, our eye fell on Kapp Linné a place where also Isfjord Radio is located. From this location we have a nice open view towards the QO-100 satellite and no mountain tops to make life difficult for us.

During the month of April, it is still very cold winter weather, so Kapp Linné is not accessible by boat because the sea is completely frozen. The only way to get there is by snowmobile. Via the mainland, this is a trip that takes at least five hours in temperatures of -20° a -25° Celcius. If the weather is very bad, this can quickly increase to seven hours.

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