Category - Blog

IRC’s For Sale

23 September 2012

United Radio QSL Bureau have a number of IRC’s For Sale worldwide.

IRC’s (Correctly stamped & Valid until 31/12/2013) GBP £1.10 each + Postage + a small Paypal charge,
I will post to anywhere in the World.

Currently in stock 489 IRC’s

If you want to buy IRC’s please send me an email on “Contact M0URX” Page. I will quote you on the price for the amount of IRC’s that you want to purchase. Mailings now posted regularly!

Letters to post 21/09/2012

20 September 2012

5B/G4MKP, 9M4SLL & CY9M Direct QSL cards were posted Friday 21st September.
All direct QSL requests up until last Sunday completed.

European Union Letters: 1,030
Rest of the World Letters: 1,489
18 packets including GDXG, MDXF, DDXF and DX Italia.

116 letters from last week posted out on 24th September 2012.
73 letters posted 26th September 2012.
81 letters posted 5th October 2012.

MS0OXE Isle of Tiree EU-008 13-20/09/2012

10 September 2012

“So where shall we go this year for the DXpedition?”
“What about Tiree?”
“Good idea, but where is Tiree?”

And so the team from the “Black Country DX and Contest Group” find themselves out and about setting up station this year on the Scottish Isle of Tiree.

From Thursday 13th September until Monday 17th September MS0OXE will be on air 24/7 and will continue on to Thursday 20th as bands dictate.

The team will be QRV on 160-10m, SSB, CW and RTTY. The team wants to give every operator the chance to work Tiree and additionally for their IOTA marathon scores.

QSL Via M0URX OQRS

More information can be found at: MS0OXE Website
IOTA: EU-008, SCOTIA: DI-10, Loc: IO66ml, WAB: NL94, IOSA: NH 04.

Operators: Simon M0VKY, Terry G4MKP, Brian G0JKY, Drew G7DMO.
The team will have the following equipment on the island and look forward to working you from the Isle of Tiree.

Transceivers:
1 x Elecraft K3 (CW)
1 X Yaesu FT-1000MP (RTTY)
1 x Yaesu FT-897 (spare)
1 x Yaesu FT-1000MP (SSB)

Amplifiers:
2 X ACOM 1000 400W (1 spare)
1 X SPE 1K 400W

Antennas:
2 X HEX BEAMS 20m – 6m
1/4 wave vertical 30m
1/4 wave vertical 40m
1/4 wave vertical 80m
1/2 wave dipole 160m

Band pass filters, array solutions six pack and coax stub filters to allow multi op/multi band operation.
LoTW uploaded daily.

MS0OXE Island of Tiree EU-008

10 September 2012

“So where shall we go this year for the DXpedition?”
“What about Tiree?”
“Good idea, but where is Tiree?”

And so the team from the “Black Country DX and Contest Group” find themselves out and about setting up station this year on the Scottish Isle of Tiree. From Thursday 13th September until Monday 17th September MS0OXE will be on air 24/7 and will continue on to Thursday 20th as bands dictate.

The team will be QRV on 160-10m, SSB, CW and RTTY. The team wants to give every operator the chance to work Tiree and additionally for their IOTA marathon scores.

QSL Via M0URX

More information can be found at:

http://ms0oxe.webs.com/
http://www.rsgbiota.org/activations/details.php?activ_uid=00005806

TX/RX:
1 x Elecraft K3 (CW)
1 X Yaesu FT1000MP (RTTY)
1 x Yaesu FT897 (spare)
1 x Yaesu FT1000MP (SSB)

Amplifiers:
2 X ACOM 1000 400W (1 spare)
1 X SPE 1K 400W

Antennas:
2 X HEX BEAMS 20m – 6m at about 40ft.
1/4 wave verticle 30m
1/4 wave verticle 40m
1/4 wave verticle 80m
1/2 wave dipole 160m

Band pass filters, array solutions six pack and coax stub filters to allow multi op/multi band operation.

5B/G4MKP QSL Preview

4 September 2012

Another QSL card in the printroom is 5B/G4MKP, Terry was QRV from Cyprus during August. The QSL card will be available from mid September. I always ask the operators that I am QSL manager for to make sure that they take high resolution images, the final finish has a much sharper QSL card and with some very skillful design work by Max, ON5UR the QSL looks excellent!

I have had several emails asking about the curent situation with QSL cards. All 5B/G4MKP, 9M4SLL & CY9M QSL cards will be out by the end of September.

The Bureau dispatch to all World Bureaus is also still on schedule for end of September.

CY9M QSL Preview

2 September 2012

Here is the CY9M direct QSL card preview. Cards will be posted out in the last weeks of September.

Please note that the Bureau QSL will be a single 2 sided QSL. The OQRS is open for Direct and Bureau QSL requests. I have scheduled the Bureau cards to be posted direct to World Bureaus at the end of September.

9M4SLL QSL Card Preview

28 August 2012

Thanks to the design work of Max, ON5UR, I am pleased to preview the 9M4SLL, Spratly Island direct 4 sided QSL card.

9M4SLL Spratly Layang Layang, 7 – 13 August 2012

19 August 2012

9M4SLL Spratly Layang Layang, 7 – 13 August 2012

by Steve Telenius-Lowe, 9M6DXX

Spratly DXpeditions are a bit like the Number 43 bus… you wait for hours then three come all together or, as in this case, you wait four years for a Spratly DXpedition then you get three within six months. Yes, before this year the last activity from Spratly had been in April 2008. Some may recall the January 2011 DX0DX operation that was scheduled to take place from the Philippine-occupied Thitu, or Pagasa, island which, unfortunately, never materialised. As a result, Spratly had gradually worked its way up The DX Magazine ‘100 Most Needed Countries’ survey to number 29 this year, up from 32 last year (world-wide, mixed modes).

SOME HISTORY

In 1998 I was a member of the 9M0C Spratly DXpedition that operated from Layang Layang Island (formerly known as Swallow Reef). This DXpedition netted 65,524 QSOs, the highest ever from Spratly and a record that still stands. After I moved to Kota Kinabalu (9M6) in 2005 I began to think about making a return trip to Layang Layang. The following year I teamed up with John, 9M6XRO (who had moved to Kota Kinabalu earlier in 2005), in an attempt to activate Spratly. In addition to having a licence from the Malaysian licensing authority, it is also necessary to obtain separate permission from the Malaysian government to operate amateur radio from Layang Layang. In 2006 that permission was granted by the Royal Malaysian Navy, which maintains a base on the island. For John and me this was easy: we visited the navy HQ in Kota Kinabalu, provided a photocopy of our passports and a passport-size photo, filled out an application form and a week later we had the necessary permission.

We were about to announce the DXpedition for April 2007 when a Japanese group announced its activity as 9M4SDX at precisely the time we had planned to go. Never mind, we thought, for us it is easy to go any time, so we would postpone our trip until the following year. In 2008 we applied and again received permission, only to have the same thing happen when an American couple announced their activity for early April 2008, followed later in the month by an operation by a group of three Norwegian amateurs.

John and I then applied for a third time, but this time permission was not forthcoming. Unbeknown to us, in May 2008 the authority responsible for the island had been transferred from the Royal Malaysian Navy to the government’s National Security Council. The responsible office was now outside Kuala Lumpur, a two and a half hour flight away for us. Letters sent to the office by us and the navy commander simply went unanswered.

Since then at least two groups had announced operations from Layang Layang that did not happen. It seemed it was no longer possible to obtain that all-important operating permission.

Then, to our surprise, Pekka Ahlqvist, OH2YY, made a short one-man DXpedition from Layang Layang in March this year, followed by the 9M0L operation the following month. Operating permission was once again being issued, we thought. John wrote to the office in May but heard nothing, despite several follow-up phone calls. By July we had all but given up hope of ever activating Layang Layang when, out of the blue, a short e-mail was received granting permission for the two of us for the following month!

Bookings were quickly made with the resort on the island and the flights booked. With the cooperation of the Borneo Amateur Radio Club, of which John and I are Life Members, we received a special event licence with the call 9M4SLL.

EQUIPMENT & ANTENNAS

There is a weight limit on flights to and from the island, so we wanted to keep things as lightweight as possible while still operating two 400W stations. I have a Yaesu FT-857D and Tokyo Hy-Power HL-1.2Kfx linear, so my choice was quite simple. John has an Icom IC-2KL linear but, together with its power supply, it weighs 21kg. He decided to take a 1960s-vintage KW-1000 linear, using a pair of 572B valves, instead. At only 15kg it saved an important 6kg, while providing approximately the same output.

Although John has an Icom IC-7000 transceiver, we have used it together with my FT-857D at various locations before and have suffered from phase noise causing interference in each direction. He decided instead to take his Ten-Tec Omni VI transceiver which, although larger and heavier than the IC-7000, has a very clean transmit output and superior receive performance.

For antennas, I have used a Butternut HF6V-X for many years and have always had good results with it. However, it does not cover 12 and 17m, so I ordered the Butternut A-17-12 add-on kit from Bencher which fortunately arrived in good time before the trip.

Unfortunately, it took longer to get on the air than we had anticipated. The first problem was with the Butternut. The antenna was resonated easily on 80m, 40m, 30m and 20m, but the SWR was all over the place on the higher bands, and almost infinity on 15m. I assumed that the 15m problem was something to do with the 12m / 17m kit – after all, the last time I used it, it worked fine without the kit, put the kit on and suddenly it is impossible to get a good SWR on 15m. Hmm. So the antenna came down and we checked all the joins, making sure there was low resistance between each section of the HF6, but couldn’t find any problems. Antenna back up; still the same. Down it came again and a lot more head scratching went on. I checked that the 15m wire decoupling stub was making a good electrical connection with the tubing of the Butternut. It was. But the 15m problem had to be something to do with the decoupling stub.

Eventually (and it took quite a while) I discovered that there was a completely open circuit between one end of the 15m decoupling wire and the other end of the same length of wire! How can a single length of plastic insulated wire be open circuit? I snipped off a couple of inches from both ends and checked again. Still definitely open circuit!

So I cut off one of the radials, replaced the 15m decoupling stub with the same length of radial wire, put up the antenna again and hey presto! – low SWR on 15m.

It took a while to get good SWR on 17m, 12m and 10m, but eventually all was OK. I bought the HF6V-X in 1990, so I guess after 22 years of assembly and disassembly, and operation (usually) right next to the ocean, salt water had got into the wire, worked its way up through capillary action, and eventually corroded so much that the wire had crumbled or snapped somewhere along its length.

We then started work on John’s antenna. He wanted to try a 43ft vertical for 20, 30 and 40m, and four separate 5/8-wave wires for 10, 12, 15 and 17m supported by a lightweight fibreglass cross-arm at the 37ft level. We made this up and started to push up the whole contraption. I was at the bottom holding it in place and John was walking it up, but I yelled at him to stop as the weight of the cross-arm plus the four wires was causing the pole to bend so much it seemed likely to break. Plan B was to remove the cross-arm but still to use the four 5/8-wave wires, tied at the 37ft level, and splayed out at different angles. This time the pole went up easily, but the five wires became badly tangled. By this time it was 5.00pm, we had been out in the sun since 9.00am in a temperature of around 35C in the shade (though there was no shade), we were both very tired, dehydrated, sunburned and needed a rest, a long drink of water and, in fact, three cold beers. After the beers it was already dark and too late to start thinking about radials.

So for the first night, we had one station on the air but we were so tired (having also been up since 3.00am to catch the flight) that we closed down early anyway. The following morning we were out in the sun again untangling the wires and laying out the radials on John’s verticals. Each wire was matched through a wide-range (manual) ATU at the base of the vertical. It was easy to get a good match on all bands apart from 12m. Whatever we tried, 12m would not match.

9M4SLL ON THE AIR

We became fully active with both stations on 8 August and immediately found that the verticals by the water were doing their usual stuff. We were lucky with propagation and had some great long-path openings into VE1, W1, 2, 3 and 4 – even one night on 12m SSB. John tried 12m CW the next night but although he worked plenty of Europeans unfortunately there was no long-path North American opening the second night.

Most nights 12m and 15m stayed open till about 2.00am, 17m till 4.00am, and 20m just about throughout the whole night. This is unheard of from home in 9M6, only 300km from Layang Layang, even using beam antennas, though inland. On the other hand, on most days all bands were almost dead from shortly after dawn until about 4.00pm.

With only two stations (and operators) we obviously must have missed some openings. For example, when 12m was wide open to Europe perhaps 10m would have been as good?

The local noise on the island was absolutely zero and it was possible to work stations at ESP levels, providing another station did not call on top!

John’s Ten-Tec proved to be extremely clean and not once did I receive any interference from him. As suspected, the FT-857D, though a great little transceiver, was not as good in this regard and John had the occasional problem with phase noise on one or two particular combinations of bands. By and large, though, this was not an issue. We used monoband Dunestar band-pass filters on each station.

The 43ft vertical worked well; it was marginally better than the Butternut on 40, 30 and 20m, but both it and the 5/8-wave wires were down on the Butternut on the higher bands. On 15m in particular, the Butternut was way better than the 5/8-wave wire, even though there was a good match through the ATU.

STATISTICS

I have always reckoned that 1000 QSOs per station per day is a good target for a DXpedition. But on this trip thanks to a combination of an almost perfect location with good propagation – and putting in some long operating hours! – we exceeded that target by almost 50%. In 6 days and 7 hours of operating we made 18,227 QSOs, of which 9800 were on SSB, 7237 on CW and 1190 on RTTY.

The continental breakdown was as follows:

Africa 121 0.7%

Asia 5839 32.0%

Europe 9609 52.7%

North America 2281 12.5%

Oceania 302 1.7%

South America 75 0.4%

Totals 18,227 100%

Further statistics can be found on Club Log by going to https://secure.clublog.org/charts/?c=9M4SLL#r and clicking on “Statistics”.

John and I left the island in a Twin Otter at 9.00am local time on 14 August and I was back home having a cup of tea at 10.50am. It is weird to realise that there is a rare DXCC entity just a 60-minute flight from home! Thanks to QSL Manager Tim, M0URX, logs were uploaded to Club Log and Logbook of The World the following day, just two days after the end of the operation. For those of us who prefer traditional paper QSLing, a four-sided colour card is being printed for direct cards and a two-sided colour card for bureau requests.

Photographs have been provided with permission by Steve Telenius-Lowe, 9M6DXX.

9M4SLL Spratly Island LoTW upload.

15 August 2012

9M4SLL log has been uploaded to LoTW, there is currently a LONG delay on the LoTW system please wait for LoTW to process the file.

Log has now been uploaded to Club Log online log search. Expeditions page.

CY9M LoTW Upload

7 August 2012

The CY9M log has been uploaded to Logbook of The World, LoTW.

CY9M QSL 1 QSL only by post = US $2 or 1 x IRC or Paypal 2 Euros. OQRS

Please remember it does not matter if you work 1 or 20 band slots the costs above remain the same.
For Multi QSL requests, please check the QSL instructions page in the left menu.

The same process for 9M4SLL Spratly Islands.