New report from Juan de Nova: lifestyle, pileup and RX

Day 4 and first week-end. We have now entered in the daily routine of the dxpedition : operating, eating, sleeping. During the 3 first days we kept a daily rate over the 10K QSO.

Up to seven stations are on the air simultaneously. It is not possible of course to keep them all the time active with 10 ops. We are managing operator’s shifts to activate as many of them during best propagation period.

Like Tromelin in 2014, the best band seems to be the 15m. We try to keep one station on SSB and one on CW to maximize the chances and increase the number of unique callsigns.

As expected, Europe is the most simple continent to work from here. We are doing our best to listen for Asia, Océania and Americas everytime time the propagation allows contacts. Please do not hesitate to report informations to our pilots if needed.

We improved a bit the RX system for 80/160m but there’s still an issue in EU/NA direction. 2 phased pennants and reversible beverages have been installed. The one in direction of Japan is working fine. Already 800 stations have been logged on Top Band. We moved slighty our TX frequency because many reports have been received to complain about « fishing beacons » on 1820.5. Check around 1821 KHz.

Few words about the life on the island. The radio camp consists of two tents on the north beach. The life camp is 25 minutes walk away on the southern part of the island. We are trying to minimize our moves as much as possible because with heat and mosquitoes, all is complicated !