J88HL, St Vincent and Grenadines DXpedition

http://j88hl.dxing.pl/

On the way again

A group of Polish HAM friends decided to organize the next DXpedition. This time we decided to find a place in the Carabbean. After a short research we and some discussions we decided that our next DXpedition target will be St. Vincent & Grenadines. There were no big DXpeditions to J8 last years (rather individual activities), it is easy to reach the place, easy to get a license and finally the place is located in a beautiful part of the World.

It is still not so easy to transport all the gear (transceivers, power amplifiers, power supplies, antennas, feeders etc.) from Europe to Carabbean. It is not a holiday operation. We go there to operate the radio, to be active on all HF bands and to make serious effort on the top band.

We will be active as J88HL during the second half of November. We have already got the license, booked the location on the island and booked air tickets. During the next weeks we will be preparing and testing our transceivers, antennas and other equipment. Please read „Equipment” page to learn what kind of gear we are going to take with us.

In general our team has a lot of experience. Most of us have already organized or participaded many DXpeditions. Please read „Team Members” page to learn who we are.

Stay tuned for the lates news as we are going to publish here all interesting updates regarding the DXpedition. Follow us on Facebook and/or Twitter and give us your feedback.

We do dope to heare you and work you on many bands and modes from J8.

We expect to be actve during the second half of November. Please stay tuned for the latest news

Equipment

Here is the list of equipment we are going to take with us.
Transceivers:
3 x Elecraft K3,
3 x Kenwood TS590
Six power supply units
Four Solid State HF power amplifiers 700W
Fiberglas poles:
2 x 8m,
2 x 12m
1 x 16m
Masts:
1x fiberglass 9m high
2 x aluminum 12m high
Receiving antennas:
1xK9AY
Few beverages
Transmitting antennas:
Verticals for 160 & 80 m,
Phased 2 el vertical array for 40 & 30m made by SP3GEM,
GP7 vertical for 40 – 10m,
2 x Spider beam,
4el Yagi for 6 meters
Nine Band Pass filters for each band
Other:
6 computers in the local Network,
WAN router
Paddles, cables, switches, connectors, adapters, feeders, antenna analyzer etc.
Logging software: Wintest for DXpedition


Operating Plan

Team members are experienced operators. We have a lot of contesting as well as DXpeditiong adventures behind. Our trip to Saint Vincent is not a kind of holiday operation. It is a serious, planned in details effort.

We are going to keep at least three stations running 24 hours a day. Each one with a power amplifier. We will be studing and observing propagation forecasts, bands openings etc.

In general we are going to be active on all HF bands (160m – 10m) and on 6 meters. We plan to pay a lot of attention to low bands. On low bands we will have vertical antennas for transmitting and K9AY + bevarages for receiving. On 40 meters we have a 2el vertical array or a single vertical and finally beam (spiderbeams, Yagi) antennas on higher bands.

We are going to have all operating positions connected to the computer network and to upload our logs to the ClubLog almost in real time.

We will be on Saint Vincent during the second half of November. We will be there duing the CW part of the CQWW DX Contest. To answer possible questions: we are not going to make a team, multi-OP contest effort. But possibly one of us will take part in the contest in one of the Single Operator All Band categories while others will operate outside the contest on WARC bands or SSB and digital modes.

Regarding the modes: we are going to be active on CW, SSB and RTTY.

On 6 meters we will be using 4 el Yagi and 100W. We hope there will be opening on the magic band during our stay in the island.

QSL Information

It was not decided who will be our QSL Manager. We talked to one of our good friends but he still needs to confirm he is ready to take care about our QSL cards. Please stay tuned…

In general we are going to confirm QSOs via the bureau and direct. For direct requests we highly recommend using OQRS instead of sending directs with $ or IRC. From our previous DXpeditions we know that sometimes directs are lost, probably they are stolen during their way. So we suggest to use OQRS if onlu possible.