Some Pictures

ZB2 Gibraltar...viewed from ferry. Will it ever be activated on eme again? With 100 W EIRP permitted it is unlikely except if the local hams support a special license which they refused to us so far.

Sunrise in Ceuta.

DF2ZC in operating position.

 DH7FB in the shack.

House plus antennas (scooter belongs to neighbour)

 

At 72° Elevation the wall is a problem but we cannot move antennas to much into the street because cars are often passing by. Of course we do in the middle of the night.

15 March at ferry terminal in Algeciras...this is the entire equipment (only DF2ZC's pilot case is not on photo)

Diary March 16th

The noise situation was somewhat better today: In the morning we checked possible reasons and fopund at least one reason in the house which made noise due to porr grounding. This made it 10 dB better and the activity started to make fun. 

Sadly we wasted roughly 1 hour altogether sending OOO to stations that were calling us but apparently not copying. Generally we assume that everybody who is calling us does also copy us or at least has a clear sync. It is very annoying if you send OOO to a station you chose from the pile-up and that station doies not reply but continues calling us. So why are you calling then at all? During the time we wasted we could have made somebody else happy who DID copy us.

That is the reason we favour the Lance W7GJ random procedure: If you copy us or at least see our sync, please do call with OOO. If you lost us then go back to calliung with call signs only. JR3REX gave a perfect example: He started calling us with OOO and we replied his call. Then we saw he went back to calling with both callsigns only so we understood he lost us. So we went on to working S52FO instead. Then we saw JR3REX calling with OOO agaion and so we worked him as next station after S52FO. That is how it is meant to be, a very very efficient thing.

If anyonee does not like the W7GJ procedure it is of course all fine: You can decide not to call us at all...or you need to wait until we have no callers using that procedure.

And please...do not embarrass us by asking things like "why did you not receiver my RRR?". By the way this was asked by a station from which we never copied ROs at all and to which we never sent RRR so we wonder why he sent RRR to us. 

We try hard to complete with everyone to give you the new DXCC.

We will be QRV again at our moonrise + 12 deg today, around 1530Z with EF9LZ calling 1st on .114

Photos will be uploaded later today.

Log March 16th

66 Complete QSOs:
UX5UL, UT6UG, JE1TNL, DL5OCD, S52FO, JP3EXR, ZS6JON, ZS5LEE, JR3REX, IK7EZN, 7K3LGC, OK1RD, G4PLZ, DK5LA, DL8FBD, OK1UGA, DK4RC, F4DJK, IK4PMB, SM6NOC, DL7APV, YL2GD, IK6CAK, EB5EEO, EW7AW, SM5DIC, OH3AWW, RW3PX, LZ1KU, F6APE, LZ1DP, SK5AA,LZ1DX, BA4SI, OK1CU, UT5ZN/P, HA8CE, HA6NQ, ON4AOI, K9MRI, PA0JMV, UA4AQL, LZ4OC, RU3GX, F6HVK, OH3KLJ, NT0V, EA4CYQ, R3PA, SV6KRW, DK5SO, PA3FYC, DL2HWA, WA3QPX, SP8NR, YL2GC, WA1NPZ, W5ZN, W7GJ, KU8Y, KD3UY, VE2JWH, OH4LA, VE6XH, SM5KWU, NZ5N

Not Complete:
OE3NFC, JA5EEU, IK1FJI, OK7XX, RK9JR, OK1NI, YO5BIN, W7JW.

Diary March 15th

We arrived at the site www.migueldeluque.com around 1200 h local time and began setting up the station before doing anything else. Sadly, we hat to realise we would need a minimum elevation of some 15 degrees due to a hill and trees in moon rise direction.

The place where we had planned to put antenna – at a corner of the paved street in the complex – had a scooter and a car standing there. Not perfect but somehow we managed to erect the antennas. Setting up was completed within two hours without problems – with DF2ZC doing the indoor and DH7FB the outdoor work, as always. Only, we were surprised to see we had very little return flow when tx. Usually there are some 7 watts coming back but this time it was just 100 mW. And there was much noise...sometimes peaking at s7 in bursts. So no prefect circumstances at all, we feared this would not be an activity with much fun but hard boring work only.

It took quite some time until we completed the first QSO with IK4WLV at 1519Z. Most times we saw just 3 or 4 weak syncs due to the noise degrading our rx performance. Somehow we managed to complete with at least 25 stations before going to dinner at a local restaurant. When we returned we saw a car had parked so close to our antennas that we could not move them to work the rest of the moon pass so we decided to QRT and hope for better luck then. Strongest stations copied were RX1AS and UA3PTW both peaking -17 in ahort low noise period.

We will investigate into noise sources the next day and should be QRV again on 16^th around 1500Z when our moon reaches 15 deg elevation.

Please do not forget to call us with Lance W7GJ procedure to speed up the process of making QSOs.

Log March 15th

25 Complete QSOs:
IK4WLV,  OH2LHE, OH2BC, S52LM, ZS4TX, SP4KM, I2FAK, SM7GVF, G4DCN, SP4K, RX1AS, G4DML, UA3PTW, EA2AGZ, ES6RQ, I2RV, IW4ARD, S51ZO, DM5TI, I3MEK, VE1KG, SM2BYC, UR3EE, ES3RF, K2TXB.

Not complete:
JE1TNL, JA5EEU, F6HVK, WA1NPZ.


PSE PSE PSE keep to the W7GJ procedure when calling us (is explained to the right).

Detailed status report is to follow.

Setting Up Station

We have arrived at the site. Indoor setup is completed. Outdoor setup is still in progress, may take another two hours or so.

Final Checks Completed!

The final equipment checks are completed both at DH7FB's and DF2ZC's place. Now everything is getting packed into the suitcase. And on top come some very basic personal belongings only ;-)

On the picture you see left on top of DF2ZC's LZ2US 2xGU74b the open preamp box, on the shelf the Tajfun LDMOS sspa with the FT857 on top and the dxpedition laptop to the right.