NEWS UPDATE – DXpedition went QRT at midnight local time. Nearly 10,000 QSOs made. Thank you for co-operation on the bands. 73 de Jacek and Marek (T2AQ/T2QR)
MARCH 28, 2017 – Yesterday an 80m vertical with a top hat and two elevated radials replaced our 40m stuff. With some matching efforts the SWR of 1.0 was achieved. In the local morning 40 CW QSOs on 3.505 (listening up 1) made by T2QR. Signals were tiny, distorted, and difficult to resolve. Please be patient and follow 16 WPM speed. Propagation was not favorable although T2QR worked several JA, UA and Ukraine stations during 1h opening toward EU.
15m opens time to time but mostly toward JA. Till now we have not logged any QSO on 12 and 10m but we plan to check these bands more often. T2AQ logged 314 contacts on 20 m during WPX Contest.
MARCH 24, 2017 – Last night we had 12h blackout, just a few contacts after 15m was open for a short time at local evening. We have about 6000 contacts logged. Several stations doubling contacts on the same bands although our logs are available in the Internet.
T2AQ plans to be active in WPX Contest on 20m.
In the same hotel, Tim T2TT installed a windom for 80m. In a couple of days we plan to replace 40m vertical with 80m. On 10 and 12m no activity till now, however Tim reported a single QSO with JA using JT-65 on 10m!
MARCH 20, 2017 — While upper bands are dead we spent most of the time on 20, 30, and 40 meters working SSB and RTTY. 17 and 15 meters are controlled time to time. There is limited space for antennas, we are using different monoband verticals and the highest mast available (15m) will serve later to activate 80m but at the moment hosts 40m vertical with 2 resonated radials.
The last night we had gale and the wideband dipole belonging to a police station broke but our antennas survived.
Logs are uploaded at least once a day but access to the Internet is sporadic.
European pileups on 20m in our evenings are sometimes heavy but QRN lowers the qso rate substantially.
MARCH 11, 2017 — All baggage has arrived safely to Suva (Fiji). Tomorrow we shall meet Tony 3D2AG working on antennas before his trip to Rotuma. Tuesday morning we fly to T2. 73 de Jacek SP5EAQ and Marek SP7DQR.
JUNE 20, 2016 — Jacek, SP5EAQ and Marek SP7DQR plan to be QRV from Tuvalu from the 14th of March 2017 on 80-10m bands. Jacek operates SSB, while Marek digi modes and CW. Activity is planned for a period of three weeks, however, the exact dates may change. They expect to get T2AQ (SP5EAQ) and T2QR (SP7DQR) callsigns (to be confirmed). Dxpedition website: http://tuvalu.sp7dqr.pl/
