A week ago
at 0630 am local time Frank DH7FB and I arrived back home at DF2ZC’s place in
JO30RN. It was once again a very boring 850 km drive through the night but as
it is not yet high season the ferry Jersey – France schedule is very basic: we
only had the chance to leave the island at 1840 local (which is the same as
UTC). So again we had to drive through France and Belgium at night. You
love the illuminated Belgian motorways which help a lot against fatigue…
We did not
expect many QSOs this time from GJ anyway as we were QRV from the same place 10
years ago and many ham friends had already worked that DXCC back then. However,
we are still disappointed. We did not even copy a single station from Japan,
for instance. On the other hand we completed with FK8CP right the first day –
so moon bounce at moonrise worked. Rod ZL3NW who was also calling us the same
time and also at moonrise the following day was never copied here, neither hpol
nor vpol. Moreover, given we had both polarities available we do not know why
none of you JA friends was seen on our screen. That is very sad.
Moreover…in
the garden the small tree from 2010 had grown to a big one and blocked many
hours of precious moon time. It had no leaves yet but apparently sap was
already rising in the tree which made it a substantial obstacle between us and
the moon. I remember that trees are said not to have such bad impacts on 144
MHz compared to higher frequencies but apparently here this tree did. A funny experience
was that also the noise picked up substantially when we pointed the antennas to
the tree. Electric noise from trees? Never heard of. But that effect was
reproducable at any time. Behind the tree was just an open field with the next
building some 200 m. The same was the case with a second tree in a bigger
distance.
Also
direction moonset we had only some 10 degrees azimuth available once the moon
was right of the tree before suddenly noise increased by 10 – 15 dB. This was
definitely from buildings but in the short time we were QRV we did not find out
about the reasons.
Compared to
our stay back in 2010 I feel we heard indeed not as well as then, though we had
in general the same setup. Also we did not hear as well as in EA9 (during the
periods down there with little or no noise). So…was the basic noise floor
substantially higher at our place than in 2020? Maybe. On the other hand if we
copied normal stations via moon – why did we not copy a single JA station at
all?
Weather was
pretty much different from April 2010 and also from last year in EA9, no
surprise. We often had some misty foggy wx, often high winds, sometimes even
heavy rain and mostly some kind of drizzle. However, there were also short
periods of sun shine. At times we even had strong static noise which also did
not make things a lot of fun.
Our short
activity on 70 cm was quite successful. Though running only 150 watts at the
antennas (2 x 16 ele flexayagi at some 16-17 dBd max we quickly completed with
6 stations though being QRP only. That 70 cm day was once again a rainy day. As
we had placed the amp on a bench close to the antenna we had to take care that
no water could enter the chassis. My barbour wax jacket did a good job and
therefore spent the night outside on the amp.
The time between
the moons we spent making some tropo QSOs to DL/F/ON/PA in the range of 800 km
max. This was a little surprise because our antenna was just 2 ½ m above
ground, good for eme but not for tropo. However, direction central Europa was a
slow slope down-hill the first 2 km, then the sea and at the horizon France.
Therefore the effect of the small antenna height was not as bad as it could
have been. Also on 70 cm we made tropo QSOs up to 700 km. Moreover we completed
a bunch of meteor scatter contacts of 2 m.
The rest of
the time we spent at the local pub where we were soon greated just like locals,
travelling the island, checking equipment and trying to find the reasons for
the low performance as well as argueing with one another.
On the 14th
we felt lucky to be back in France because it was not sure whether the ferryes
would perhaps be suspended due to COVIC-19. Since we feel our results this time
were below the expected we would not rule out travelling to GJ again – and not
again in 10 years. Only to give that DXCC to those who still need it. Then
maybe from another location – or not. At least with more that the 30 m antenna
cable we had so that we could then use an antenna location further away from
that tree. We feel we still are in debt to so many ham friends, especially but
not only in JA. It wasn’t meant to be…or as Frank DH7FB always says: “You can’t
milk a bull”.
Direct QSLs
via DF2ZC with 3 $ and SAE or better an address sticker. Or via paypal request
with QSO data and address to xteamdxp@gmail.com
