C21HA Nauru Island 10/1-6/2/2012

[IK0ZCW]

HA5AO E HA5UK saranno attivi da Nauru Island 10 Gennaio - 6 Febbraio 2012 come C21HA
Trasmetteranno sulle Bande HF
QSL via HA5UK

[IK0ZCW]

UPDATE - We finished the antennas and station installation, starting operations on January 12 at 00:50 UTC.

Unfortunately the SteppIR BigIR motor has gone during the transportation from the antenna bag. We set up an inverted L antenna for the second station, but it means strong limitation in signal strength. It is good for NA/SA but unlikly for EU. The two verticals are doing the job well, especially on the higher bands. We tried top band this morning, but the noise level was high, so we could log few stations only.

[IK0ZCW]

The first week has gone of our 4 weeks activation of Nauru. The antennas in the sea need daily maintenance since it’s very rough and destructive. The high tide is approx 2m with strong waves. We can do the maintenance only during low tide. Temperature is around 40C or even more, so is very hard to work 2-3 hours in the sun every day.

The propagation was not really good this last week. The low bands, 160 and 80 meters, are very noisy. The equatorial noise level is S5-S9. Not really possible to work on the low bands. The higher bands are quite O.K to NA/SA direction. AS and OC is not a problem from here. However, the EU openings are very poor. The signal level from EU is around the noise level. Very difficult to copy EU stations. Everyone from Europe is like a very small pistol here, our side.

The operating attitude also does not help us to copy stations. We are fully aware of EU opening times on different bands. We are fully aware of the propagation. We try to do our best but need your help working with EU. Please be patient, please listen, listen and listen. Repeat your full callsign three, four times with 20-25 wpm maximum. If we can copy a fragment only, please do not call if it does not match with your callsign. Repeat your full callsign two or three times. Please check the online log. Do not work again if you are in the log. We also have strong QRM from nearby stations, probably VK, in the pile-up window, as well as on our own QRG. It’s a pity and we cannot understand this attitude.

[IK0ZCW]

This morning, between 20-21 UTC we were working with Stateside on 12 meters. 1 kHz below our QRG someone was also making QSOs in our pile-up using and identifying himself with our C21HA call sign. We know that there are police stations, we know that tuning on the DX QRG can happen, we know that sometime there is interference on the frequency. We know that sometime pirate stations are working. We know that there are fake spots in the clusters, using invalid own callsign (like HA5DX, but we know the IP address). We know that very strong stations continuously make QRM on our QRG and/or in the pile-up window. However, this cheeky, insolent attitude of this morning surpasses every imagination. No words to classify this person. It is not simply annoying. It is far beyond the rude, impolite behaviour. It will make lots of stations disappointed, as they maybe exchanged reports with this pirate station. We are sorry about it. Is there anything further down? We spent a lots of our money to make other hams happy putting the C2, Nauru into their log.

That could help you to indentify the real C21HA: we always working with high speed CW, (35 wpm or more) on the higher bands, with 50 wpm rprt and TU. It may be helps.