9X0SP & 9U0A

Rwanda & Burundi - Oct/Nov 2010

News

Tuesday, Nov 09, 2010

9U0A is QRT. The station was closed at 04 UTC after a QSO with AH7C on 80m. Thanks to all for calling us!

Monday, Nov 08, 2010

Unfortunately another night with heavy QRN. We had to switch off the stations after midnight due to thunderstorms. It is continuosly raining since then. We will close the station tomorrow morning (Tuesday) after sunrise, take down the antennas and pack all gear. The flight back home is scheduled to be at noon. We'll be back in Germany on Wednesday morning.

Sunday, Nov 07, 2010

Everyone is fine. Conditions could be better. All three stations are running. However we have problems with frequent power outages. There were maybe 10 outages on the first evening, sometimes 5 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes. Our internet access is much worse than in Rwanda, we can at least update the online log. 160m is almost impossible due to a very, very high QRN level.

Wednesday, Nov 03, 2010

Because of changes in flight operations we arrived at our Hotel Club du Lac Tanganyika yesterday in the late evening.

Today we build all antennas.

We started out operations at 18:00 UTC. 60 minutes later we had the first power cut.

Tuesday, Nov 02, 2010

We will close the station at 5:00 UTC and remove all antennas. The team flies to Burundi today and will arrive there in the late afternoon. Thanks for calling us! See you from Burundi.

Monday, Nov 01, 2010

We called on 160m each night. Our tests with big guns in Europe were unfortunately unsuccessful. We apologize for it. Today Sigi and Frank were at the Tumba college of technology and held a presentation about ham radio with the Rwanda Utilities Regulation Agency. Tomorrow we leave Rwanda towards Burundi.

Sunday, Oct 31, 2010

The biggest problem are the power cuts. Often they take few minutes, the last loss in the afternoon took several hours.

Friday, Oct 29, 2010

Last night the 80m band was noisy. We have made no contacts on 80m. Today Sigi and Frank were at the National University of Rwanda in Butare together with Francis 9X1NF for a meeting with students who are interested in amateur radio. We have prepared a presentation of our hobby. At the weekend we want to be QRV in digital modes. If we have good conditions we will also be QRV in the contest.

Thursday, Oct 28, 2010

We arrived well in the Golf Hills Residence Kigali yesterday at 1400 local time. Everything and everybody is doing well, all equipment is complete. The weather was great when we arrieved. Later we had a big thunderstorm. Darkness comes fast here. We could only build the 80m antenna and ran the first 375 QSOs.

We had a power failure until 1:30 PM local time. We used this time for the setup of the other antennas. The 160m, 80m, 40m and 30m antennas, the Spiderbeam, the HF9 and the 6m Yagi are up. Unfortunately the next thunderstorm already announces itself.

Wednesday, Sep 08, 2010

Today we got our 9X0SP license from RARU. Many thanks to DL2RUM.

Friday, Sep 03, 2010

Today we got our 9U0A license from ACRT Burundi. Many thanks to the German Embassy and our agent.