Indian Ocean island contact!
‘Chasing a DXpedition requires a certain amount of commitment!’ writes Wythall Radio Club member Tim Beaumont MØURX. ‘A little studying of what the team’s priorities are, a close eye on the propagation to decide your best band choices and a little bit of luck along the way!’
Here’s his report of chasing 3B7A operating from the tiny island of Saint Brandon in the Indian Ocean.
‘Saint Brandon in the Indian Ocean was last activated 11 years ago in 2007 when we had similar low sunspot conditions and poor radio propagation.
So to contact 3B7A on high frequency (HF) I was going to have to work them either early in the afternoon or later afternoon around tea time. With no sun spots and a Solar Flux Index of just 67, propagation doesn’t get much worse than that!
Saturday morning I had seen them spotted on DXCluster on 20m, 17m and 15m, but nothing was heard here.
I came back after a couple of hours and they were still working North America on 15m phone. Then silence…. Just a brief “3B7A – stand by 5 [minutes]”…. I set my transmitter 8 KHz up from their frequency and poised my foot over the radio foot switch, ready for them to get back on air.
It seemed an age and I wondered if they had just changed bands or mode? I decided to stay put… then “3B7A listening all stations 5 to 15 up”. The adrenaline starts pumping…. “Mike Zero Uniform Radio X-ray” hoping that the DX was also listening on the frequency I was calling…. “M0URX you’re 59” . I reply quickly “59 TU [Thank you]”
Wow, it doesn’t often happen like that, right place right time and luckily the pile up was sleeping at the re-start. By 6pm 3B7A’s HF signal quickly dropped and was lost for the day.’