XV4D

Vietnam - November 2009

News

Tuesday, Nov 17, 2009

XV4D is QRT after 18,416 QSOs. Thanks for calling us! Despite the poor conditions we are quite happy with the results. With such low signal strengths we couldn't work more SSB. The team flies to Saigon today at 1500 local time and will arrive back in Berlin at 0600 local tomorrow.

 
DL7DF - DK1BT - DL7UFR   DL4WK - DK1BT - DL5CW

Sunday, Nov 15, 2009

We experience strange band conditions here. We have some 16,000 QSOs now, everything is going slower than we wish. We call for hours at times for just a handful of QSOs.

We are using a Spiderbeam, a HF9, a vertical for 30m, one for 40m, one for 80m and one for 160m. We are also using a dipole for 80m, another one for 160m, a 3 ele Yagi for 17m and a Beverage. All antennas work perfectly. There are hardly any openings at our morning hours. We have openings on the high bands in the afternoon hours. The QSO rates are not overwhelming.

All signals are not loud. We have tried SSB when the signals got louder. But this was only good enough for a handful of stations. We would like to work more SSB but signal strengths are simply too low for SSB.

40m, 30m and 20m are running well. The propagation window to North America opens after 2300 UTC. We have been endlessly calling on 20m the last days starting at 2200. We logged JA's and after 2300/2330 also W's.

Our experience is that apparently noone is tuning the bands anymore, everybody is waiting for DX Cluster spots. When a spot comes up the pileup starts immediately.

Local power supply works very well. The generator starts after a few minutes if the power fails. We have had thunderstorms however they are not as strong as in Africa. All equipment runs well, no failures.

Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009

We have reached 10,000 QSOs. There was a short 12m opening into Europe yesterday, none today. We worked more Asia and Europe on 160m but it's difficult to copy signals. A few pictures of Phu Quoc added to the Pictures Page.

Some old men meet a new challenge:
(Manfred, Andy, Frank and Sigi)

Friday, Nov 6, 2009

All antennas are built, see our updated Pictures Page. We worked 80m last night and checked 160m permanently. However no success yet on 160.

Thursday, Nov 5, 2009

We arrived well in Phu Quoc yesterday at 1500 local time. Everything and everybody is, all equipment is complete. The weather is great, too. Darkness comes fast here. We could only build the 40m antenna and ran the first 860 QSOs. We have Internet access and can read the cluster spots.

Frequencies: our license shows some frequency constraints to the regular band plan:

On 80m we may transmit between 3500 and 3520 CW, 3795 and 3815 SSB.

40m is 7000 through 7100 kHz

30m is only 10109 through 10119

The 160m, 80m, 40m and 30m antennas, the Spiderbeam and the HF9 are up. The first 17m, 20m and 30m QSOs are in the log. Sudden power failures may occur occasionally for a few minutes. You can't hear us then. However the hotel has a generator that works pretty well. First pictures of arrival in Saigon available on the Pictures Page.

Wednesday, Nov 4, 2009

We arrived well in Saigon. The baggage arrived also well and is complete. We picked up our license at XV2A the same day. We leave Saigon in the early afternoon today to head to Phu Quoc and then start building the antennas. Let's see how far we get; it's getting dark here pretty early.

At 1300 UTC we had the first station ready and began to run 40m.

Tuesday, Nov 3, 2009

The team is on the way to Vietnam.