Hello from Juan de Nova

by / Thursday, 31 March 2016 / Published in Uncategorized

After our trip by boat the finally anchored nearby the lagoon entrance. It took a complete day to bring all equipement ashore, dealing with low and high tides in the lagoon.

We built the radio camp and antennas under extreme conditions. No wind at all during those first days. On night time, the temperature doesn’t really decrease and we have thousands of mosquitoes showing up, looking for fresh meat. Hopefully the two tents are well done. The sea is close but very warm, with sharks coming very close to the sea shore.

Prior to the expedition, we worked with  satellite pictures. We met on the island a configuration slightly different than expected but we have been able to set-up all antennas as planned. The field around the camp is not a soccer field but rather a place with high bushes (arbustes, broussailles in french) that makes any move a challenge ! in addition, there’s spider as big a man hand everywhere. That’s Juan de Nova ! Meanwhile, the lagoon and sky colors are just amazing !

We started the operation yesterday around 1230 utc. We worked with as many station as possible around the clock, depending of the operators shifts. The life camp is located a mile away from the shacks. During the first 24h, we did a bit more than 10K qso. The first batch has been send to Clublog and should be visible on the online-log soon.

Conditions are not too bad. We are meting a propagation close to our predictions. We always keep an eye on the planning not to miss any opening toward the “difficult regions of the globe”. We ran on 160 and 80m without any RX antennas but we should have them tonight to cover all parts of the world. The 6m beacon is active.

Do not hesitate to drop a mail to our pilot if you have informations to forward to the team. We are in touch through the BGAN terminal or via radio.

The team is now focused on the pile-up. Thanks for your co-operation, see you on the bands !

 

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