Thursday, May 16, 2019

Looking back at GJFF

Loads of antenna, coax and guy wires, batteries, charging gear, 4 radio's, an amp, 4 masts, mast supports, beams, tables, chairs and three guys managed to fit in one car (just) and undertake a day of driving + 1.5h of boating to get to GJ last Friday.
Au revoir douce France!

We went there with good memories of WWFF expeditions to LX and HB0 in the two preceding years. We were hoping to beat HB0 and reach LX levels in terms of QSOs (1700 in HB0, 2150 in LX) and include as many DX chasers in the fun as possible.
It was raining when we arrived and the forecast for the rest of the night was not good. We did however manage to put up the hexbeam in the first nature reserve for 1.5h. We were awarded a nice opening to NA.


PD7YY inside the car because of the weather Friday evening

Saturday - strong start, unhappy end

The next day the weather was brilliant. Sunshine and 14C. We were visited by Nigel GJ7LJJ and Keith G8IXN on our first activity. Keith showed up at our second spot as well by coincidence (small island). Both activities were busy with regular pileups. 40m was not very good but 20m made up for that easily thanks to Sporadic E conditions. As we had been using N1MM in different configurations we were not sure about our progress but we estimated we were past 1000 QSOs already by the end of the afternoon - a good sign.



Hexbeam in the wild on Saturday

We were looking forward to a nice long night activity from a high point on the NW corner of the island. When we had built up two stations and had just started making QSOs we were visited by local police that acted very unprofessionally cutting our activity short. Afterwards we learned this was "honorary police"... 

We lost at least 200 potential QSOs this way and a time window to work NA and SA chasers.


Sunday - making up lost time in great weather

Sunday started out with a little worry - how would the authorities react? Nigel was our support on FB messenger trying to reassure us that ham radio was not in fact outlawed on GJ. And he was right. After a call to the right person we were "free to go". Trying to catch up we revised our plan and went for four activities, revisiting the two parks that had had only marginal attention (both the evening sessions on Friday and Saturday). Skipping everything but a quick dinner we were on the air almost the whole day. Conditions on 20m were brilliant with a lot of Es. We even went up to 10 and 6 when Es allowed it. 40m was OK but just like on Saturday did not really fly. We ended our trip at the edge of the beach looking out over the sea.


We arrived at our final destination at sunset


Overall impressions

We greeted almost 1800 different radio amateurs on the air in 2700+ QSOs. In that enormous group we recognised a lot of familiar chasers but also a lot of new calls. We were happy to make a lot of DX contacts (65 DXCC in total). The skip to NA was especially good with 144 QSOs from 30 different states and 5 different VE provinces in the log. Odx was 11.5k km into CE.




Our experience with the honorary police of GJ was depressing but the reactions from the local radio community were very supportive (Nigel GJ7LJJ and the local RSGB representative he called upon).
We were blessed with great /P weather - sunshine and moderate temperatures and enjoyed beautiful nature reserves with ocean views in many cases. We stayed in a nice hotel that has a stunning view over the Atlantic.


View from our hotel

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

GJFF awards

We are pleased to offer awards to the chasers of our GJFF expedition. We did eight /P activities from six different nature reserves. Out of 1782 different chasers, 384 reached an award level (bronze, silver or gold). 

Conditions were especially good for EU and NA. Skip to AS was poor and we sadly did not manage to log any OC stations. 

Gold level was reached:
  • in EU by: PE1GNP, SP2SV, SP1MVG, S58AL, OM1AX, IW2NXI, EA2DT, DL8NDG, DD0VE
  • in NA by: KD1CT, W1OW, VE3ZN, VE3NEP, KG8P
  • in SA by: PY1SX, PT7ZT
  • in AF by: EA8XNX, CT3KN
  • in AS by: 4Z4DX, RX9CCJ

DD0VU, OH6RP & PC5Z deserve an honorary mention. Even though they did not reach the gold level, they did manage to work us in each of the six parks.


You can claim your awards by typing your call (without any "/") in the box below. If you managed to reach an award level, the award will download automatically.


QSLs

QSL cards have been ordered. It may take a few weeks before we can send them out. 
  • If you want to request a direct card you can do this on ClubLog: MJ/PG8M/P or MJ/PH0NO/P
  • Note that we will send a bureau card by default to all contacts.
  • There is no need to request a bureau card through ClubLog. 
  • We do not need your QSL card for this activity.

Sunday, March 17, 2019

WWFF expedition to GJ

After very enjoyable WWFF expeditions to LX (2017) and HB0 (2018) - logging almost 4k QSOs from around the globe - we are going to activate a number of nature reserves on Jersey Island (GJ) on May 11 and 12 of this year.   



We will be using MJ/PG8M/P and MJ/PH0NO/P on the island - alternating between these calls as we move from park to park. If you hear us (or see us digitally) without "/P", we will be active from the hotel (which is sadly not located in a park).

Plan
We will be travelling on Friday May 10 and back on Monday May 13. Depending on travel time we might start our first activity on Friday evening. We will definitely be active on Saturday May 11 and Sunday May 12 until late in the evening UTC using at least two radios simultaneously on all usable bands from 80m up (including 60m and VHF - 2m & 6m - if there is any propagation) in SSB and CW.

We plan to operate from 6 to 8 different nature reserves. The exact number will depend on local conditions and propagation. In LX and HB0 we activated 7 parks.

QSL
Bureau cards will be sent after the expedition - automatically (no need to request them).
Direct cards can be requested here (allow a couple of weeks for printing): 



Setup
Our gear this expedition:

  • 4x mobile radio's (FT-857 / IC-910 / KX3)
  • 70Mhz transverter
  • 1x Ameritron ALS-500m
  • Folding Hexbeam
  • Center- and end-fed wire antennas (vertical / sloper / inverted v)
  • Triband VHF yagi 2-4-6m

Award
Stations working us will of course get credits for the GFF and WWFF program. Apart from that we will make an award available as we did with our two previous expeditions. There will be three levels for chasers: bronze, silver & gold - depending on how many times you worked our expedition with multipliers for different parks.

We are counting on a minimum of 7 different locations we will activate. Based on that plan the awards will be available as follows:

  • Bronze: 2 parks confirmed
  • Silver: 4 parks confirmed
  • Gold: top 5 score per continent (min. 2 contacts)

The top score per continent will be calculated as follows: 4 points for every park confirmed and 2 additional points for different mode and/or band per park. The awards will be made available for download within two weeks after the expedition on this website.

Examples of the awards: