[ADXA] TX7T power point on upcoming DXpedition

Tue Sep 17 16:04:43 EDT 2019

We are gearing up for our trip to the South Pacific...hopefully, we will have lots of ADXA members in the log...we hope to have good conditions for the low bands where we will concentrate - it's November, so we are crossing our fingers.  one member of the team, K5PI, has written an article for the CWOps monthly newsletter (see below) and also produced a power point which he used for a club in Central Texas.

We will all be taking pix and will put together another presentation for use with clubs...I would be honored to be asked to bring a program to a quarterly ADXA meeting in 2020!  My XYL has a long time commitment for us this weekend so I will miss the tour of Joel's fabulous QTH and antenna farm.  See you in December for sure.

Vy 73 and CU from FO/W5SJ and TX7T!

Bill

Bill Priakos - W5SJ
10 Free Ferry Heights
Fort Smith, AR 72903
479.461.8368
[Image result for arkansas razorbacks icon]

The CanAm DX Group is a loose association of primarily US and VE ops who have banded together to go on DXpeditions.  We have a lawyer in the group (egad!) but have generally eschewed too much formality.

Long boat rides, parkas, tents and generators?  Nah.  We prefer scheduled air, commercial establishments for lodging, and electricity from the wall.  But we'll take long flights, pay excess baggage charges, and stay in modest quarters for good pileups!

Operators for this adventure include F6BCW, K4UEE, K5PI, W5MJ, W5RF, W5SJ, VA7DX, and VE7KW.  All are experienced DXpeditioners and/or contesters.  All are partial to CW, and four are CWops members, UEE, PI, MJ and SJ.

The biggest challenging in planning a DXpedition is choosing the destination.  We first look at what's required to get there.  Then we identify and evaluate possible accommodations.  We prefer places that have hosted DXpeditions before.  There's much less negotiation required, and we can often get some technical details on terrain, etc. from the previous operators.  This year, we're very fortunate to have F6BCW on the team.  He lived in French Polynesia for several years and did a DXpedition from our selected location a few years ago.  Of course, having a native French speaker is a great boon as well.

We plan to set up three high power stations (500W maximum, by regulation) with two hex beams (one of which does 40M), a homebrew moxon for 15 and 30, a wire beam for 80, and a vertical for 160.  Each station will have three bands "hard wired" to it.  One station will do 10, 17, and 40.   Another will cover 12, 20, and 80.  The third will work 15, 30, and 160.  This system worked quite well in the Australs last year.

We have several low band enthusiasts on the team who urged for a winter date for best conditions.  We settled on November 6-17.

Hiva Oa, Marquesas is about the same distance from the US as Oahu, Hawaii.  While our expectations are tempered by the low sunspot numbers, we do expect good conditions to the North America and Asia.  We know Europe will be difficult, but we plan to do our best to put a good many EU stations in the log.

While we love CW, we can't ignore the growing popularity of FT8.  We plan to have a solid presence on FT8 and expect that we'll give a lot of newer operators an all-time new country that way.  One spotter for our last year's Austral operation commented that we must have forgotten to bring microphones.  We did ultimately figure out how to plug them in last time, and plan to do so early on this trip.

At this writing, we've finished our travel and lodging arrangements.  We had hoped to ship some items in advance with the help of a contact in Tahiti, but this is proving more complicated than we thought.  So it looks like we'll take everything as checked baggage.  We will likely use an air freight service to ship some items to the Marquesas as soon as we arrive in Tahiti.  This includes several sports equipment containers (e.g., for golf clubs or skis).  As you might imagine, the list of things to take is quite long, but of course we have to remember everything!  Next we'll work to balance the weight among team members, probably shipping a few items domestically.

Please visit our web site http://www.marquesas2019.com/ for updates.  Please note our generous vendor sponsors and if you're able, please contribute a bit to help offset the substantial logistics and other costs.  We look forward to hearing you in the pileups in November!

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