A35YZ

Tonga - March 2012

News

Sunday, Jun 03, 2012

The A35YZ QSL cards are there. Since then we have processed more than 2200 QSL requests. Approximately 9000 QSOS were checked. All OQRS requests are answered. All the letters and all bureau QSL cards we have received to 30 May 2012 are now answered.

Thursday, Mar 22, 2012

A35YZ is QRT after 41,175 QSOs. Thanks for calling us! We are tired, have to be at the airport at 10 AM local and still have to pack our equipment.

l.to.r. Jan - SP3CYY, Jan - DL7UFN, Wolf - DL4WK, Reiner - DL7KL, Manfred, DK1BT, Andy - DL5CW, Frank - DL7UFR, Les - SP3DOI, Sigi - DL7DF

Wednesday, Mar 21, 2012

We fly back to Auckland tomorrow 1000 local Tonga time. We'll start to take down all antennas at noon today and try to log as many contacts as possible until noon. All five stations need to be packed tomorrow morning. Our location is on the other side of the island and it's a hour to the airport.

Wednesday, Mar 21, 2012

We have had better conditions our morning on 80 and 160m. We have switched a few times between both bands and have had the first contacts on 160m at 1700 UTC, also with Japan. We hope for good conditions again and will continue to switch between 80 and 160 back and forth. SSB: we would like to operate more SSB. However, the signals are mostly weak. If the signals get louder we will switch to SSB. Conditions are just a bit better now but it's still frustrating for us.

Friday, Mar 16, 2012

The pile-ups decrease, also because of the lower SFI. It is some kind of frustration for us at times with only 50 QSOs in 2 hours. It can only get better...

160m: we have no separate antenna for 160m. We use and switch the 80m vertical. We have QSY'ed to 160m every night after requests from some stations. We don't hear any signals on 160m! And apparently noone hears us! We had for example a sked with a UA0 station which had a huge signal on 80m. Nothing, nada, on both sides.

80m: we have worked the first G stations last night around 1730 UTC. We can still work 80m at daylight some time after our sunrise. There is no long path propagation to Europe between 0630 and 0645 UTC. The only chance is our sunrise and the European late afternoon. One bad habit is that quite a few Europeans keep on calling us on 80m without hearing us...

Wednesday, Mar 14, 2012

More than 22,000 QSOs are in the logs now. We have pretty high QRN on 80m. Please send your call several times! Sending it once is not enough for us to copy it. We are also on 80m long path for Europe every evening at our sunset and we know the openings are short. We also try 160m but haven't had any luck so far. On 40m we have occasional radar QRM over several hours, apparently from China. It's difficult to copy calling stations but we don't give up. We can't copy weak stations on 40 through the radar QRM - it's all over the band. On 12m we have a new Quad that plays very well.

Monday, Mar 12, 2012

All stations are running, more than 13,000 QSOs are in the log already. The 160m antenna is up and we are trying topband this night. A large set of pictures updated on the Pictures page.

Wednesday, Mar 7, 2012

A35YZ came on the air today at 1140 UTC having the first QSOs on 40m.

Monday, Oct 10, 2011

Today we got the information about our callsign A35YZ from the licensing authority.