9J2LA Press Release #5 – 10.03.2020

By | 10/03/2020

Today we are qrv for 5,5 days from Zambia. As we announced an increased lowband activity for our DXPedition we will have 4 more nights on 160m / 80m available. The last night will be from Saturday to Sunday. We already achieved 1700 QSOs on 80m as well as 800 QSOs on 160m. The only things we are still struggling on are static crashes and big QRN which makes it difficult to work the tremendous pileups during the nightshifts.
We tried a lot to increase our RX situation though. We erected a LIRA, a beverage 1m above ground, a BOG and lastly a K9AY array. Unfortunately, the antennas are just to close to the property, and we get a lot of man-made noise except from the K9AY loop. It seems like the best RX is still on the vertical itself.

Another achievement is the availability of a station on the QO-100 geostationary satellite providing over 300 QSOs on SSB and CW until now. We will be QRV there each evening to hand out this DXCC there as well.
Until now we achieved a good amount of over 16.000 QSOs from 160m through 13cm.

As our DXPedition focusses on the lowbands we try to not miss any openings there. Our goal is to be listening on JA at their sunrise as well as on NA on our sunrise. In between there is a focus on EU.

Overall the QTH in Chisamba is okay and we deal with friendly people and an awesome host who allows us to put up any antenna we like on the property. Foods and beverages are good as well and we enjoy staying here. Though we are still facing power shedding each day at around 1500z so we have to start our purchased generator until +/- 2100z when the power is finally coming back.

Anyways, we experienced a lot of patience on all bands – please keep up with this awesome spirit!

Also a huge thanks to our donors. We try to keep the list on the website updated on a regular basis.

73 de Rune, LA7THA
9J2LA team leader

 

P.S.: At last something we had to deal with yesterday. We lost the LIRA RX antenna due to a cyclist who passed luckily 4 supporting poles but rode straight into the last one. Though, the antenna is already up again 😊

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