It seemed to be a nice day for a field-day. The sun was already
shining (According to later calculates it was not. It went up at
04.31, but at least it was not dark) and birds singing when the
clock rang at 04.00 local time on the 15th of may. After going over
the check-list an extra time everything was loaded into my car and
off to pick up some stuff at my father. The stuff that was taken
extra was a gasoline-generator, a compass and some other stuff. My
father also joined in.
Unfortunately I now afterwards know that during the loading of some
of this into the trunk of my car I disrupted the operation of my
APRS-tracker. I have not yet looked into it's likely nothing
serious.
After a lonely two-hour trip where we had seen something like
10 cars the whole way we arrived at the site just before 7 local
time. We could perhaps have been there slightly earlier but very
close to the site we made a bad decision on which route to take and
ended up in a road so small that I sometimes were more worried
about the health of my car then about not beeing able to get any
contacts.
At the camp-site not a soul was visible. Everyone except the man
guarding the fire was still asleep, but we woke them up, at least
most of them. An intensive time of trying to get all the gear set
up now took place. There were some minor confusion about where to
set up the gear, which antenn to use and where to put it, but the
vertical 2m-antenna they had set up went down and a 9 element
antenna was put up instead. Then the problem went over to power.
They had turned of their own generator since it was so loud. Well,
our generator is rather silent so we took it out of the car and
started it. Within minutes there were complaints about noice
cancelling the 80m band. PSU-off gave nothing, Generator off =
silence. Ok, time for the loud one.
First contact?
At 7.45 everything was set up and monitoring started. Within a few
minutes YU1EV was heard, and I was very happy. I started calling
him but not a single burst more was received for 20 minutes, so I
gave him up and went over to calling CQ as planned. The first
station calling was DL9MCC. Solid report and I soon got the R's.
Then again silence.
At 09.00 it was time to turn the antenna a bit more south.
But, what was this? Brrrrrrrrrr rrrrr rrrrrrrr rrrrrrrr, a annoying
noice was heard. It was not that bad at first but as the sun went
up and the moist from the night departed things got worse. With
antenna east of 175 it was silent, but every direction to the west
was bad. Worst direction was about 225 degrees. This noice was
likely caused by a cracked isolator on a high-voltage power line
close by. Under dry conditions small sparks tend to form inside and
they become effective transmitters. The going on and off was likely
caused by the wind causing the power line to move small amounts so
that the sparks came and went. I wonder what the power-line owner
would have thought if we had called them up and said: "Hey, you
have to shut down the powerline and replace an isolator beacuse you
are disrupting our meteor-scatter communications."
I Tried to survive through the noice but no signals were
picked up the second hour. Third our were supposed to be even
further west, but given the noice this was not possible. I had to
leave the antenna at 185. I think it would not have mattered so
much if it at least would have been constant, but the signal came
one and off several times during each period. Up 5dB, down 5bB. How
do you think the WSJT reacted on this?
Flooded carburator
Next signal picked up was "28 28 SA30IL" Nice, but from who? I was
not sure about what to do but decided to un-split and start asking
QRZ on .362. It was the always reliable PE1AHX who was calling. Now
the real problems started. In a few minutes one of the gous came
and said: "We need to shut down the generator. The carburator has
flooded and it will soon stop by itself if we dont do something to
fix it." Rig off, computer on battery. Fortunately they hade some
big batteries to use instead. Problem, no connectors that fitted.
Most of the problems were fixed by clamping things together so
within three minutes I was back on the air. After another five or
ten minutes they came back and said, now you can go to 220 again,
and so we switched back. Big mistake. Soon the generator stopped
all by itself. Back to battery, well now some of the cables were
gone. Took so long time I put the computer into sleep mode, which
in turn caused me to loose the starting time of the contact with
AHX. The power was gone for a long time but in the end they got it
working again. In the end the contact with PE1AHX was completed
anyway.
Next call heard was DF6YL, well I heard it as DF6IL in the
first burst but that was soon corrected. Problem with this one was
that I never got the R's. The only thing that I got was reports
from another PA who's call I never recorded. The noice took me
off-line some time after 12 local time. Before this there had been
new additional problems with the generator causing me to go
permanently battery operated.
Goals achieved?
So how about the goals of the expedition then?
Well, First one was to promote MS. Cant say anything about that
other than yes I worked MS at the field-day and completed some
contacts.
Second goal was to have some local amateurs promise to get active.
Kind of half passed/failed on this one. I handed out two copies of
WSJT installation files and they were really interested, but they
never promised to get active.
Last goal was to work some QSOs. Well, have to say failed on this
one. Given the amount of energy put into creating an interest in
the expedition I would not say that two and a half QSO was good
enough. I almost feel guilty for bothering so many amateurs around
europe and failing to deliver.
Log
Start time (UTC)
Call
RST recv
RST sent
Locator
Other
End time (UTC)
06.32
DL9MCC
27
27
JN58UA
Best 520/11
06.44
Before 08.40
PE1AHX
28
27
JO21OS
Lost starttime due to electrical problems
09.15
09.20
DF6YL
27
Secret
JO31WS
Never got the RRR
10.00
Lessons learned
You need more practice than I have before going on a
expedition. For instance:
I want to keep all sound-files from received pings but always
forget to push the button.
I never remember to not the best bursts length and
strength
I don't automatically recoginze calls with small
misprints.
Ask for advice on route selection. Don't trust maps. Two
equally sized roads on a map may in reality be one good and one
better suited for ants.
Ensure your gear is compatible with the rest of the gear
present at a site you are about to visit.
Don't trust other peoples cables and antennas
Ensure the QTH has a decent noice-level. Especially under dry
conditions when isolators for high-voltage power lines starts to
make noice.
Never run an expedition on power from a generator that you
don't have control over yourself. (Because then you only have
yourself to blame)
Bring Earphones if you are going to work outdoors. You might
not be able to tell the difference of a burst and an elk otherwise.
Actually, your brain will have a different filter applied so in
most cases things will turn up on the screen that you should have
heard but that was filtered out as noice or irrelevant sounds by
your brain.
Summary
It was a nice day overall. There were problems with the equipment
and I am a too unexperienced operator but since I managed to raise
the interest for MS in JO69 by at least a bit. It was also nice to
meet some friends who I normally only meet over the radio, and I
got to see at least the outside of the place where Lars-Magnus
Ericsson was born. I hope that I will now be at least half as
successful as he was.
