Anyone who chases DX can’t fail to have noticed that the Jarvis Island DXpedition is now on air and has been for less than 48 hours. I did have a listen yesterday but didn’t hear them anywhere.
I set up HamAlert notifications specifically for N5J with the source set as G, GM and GW in the hope that if they were seen locally, I’d have more chance and just before 10:00z this morning, I had an alert for them being on 17m FT8.
I’d left the radio and the computer in the shack switched on so it was a simple matter of tuning the wireless and the aerial to the correct frequency and seeing what I could hear. I was nicely surprised to see a weak trace that was right on the threshold of the decode levels from N5J and with the ‘Verified’ message from the new SuperFox/Hound mode.
It took just four minutes of calling before I was fortunate enough to get a reply. I know FT8 is very much luck of the draw, as a caller, I have no real control over whether the remote station selects me or not. I think I was lucky enough to be there quite quickly once they started operating, they were making plenty of QSOs but the band wasn’t absolutely heaving.
I didn’t have the amplifier on, this was just about 90 watts out of the Kenwood TS-890 into my SteppIR UrbanBeam.
I kept an eye on the screen after I worked them by accessing my main computer remotely from my office and only a few minutes after, the signal faded down and wasn’t able to be decoded any more.
I’m quite pleased with this one.
Worked them 6 bands. 10 12 15 17 20 30. Fish in a barrel. Like going to the Zoo and seeing animals.
Congratulations.
What you don’t say is where you are, it’s very difficult to work them from Europe and at the moment, with over 70,000 QSOs in their log, they’ve only worked around 100 English stations.
73 Keith.
I ended up with four bands: 12m, 17m and 20m FT8 and 15m CW, I was happy with that.