And now what?

"The on-line log has now been updated to include all QSOs up to 03:31Z today, when 3B7C closed down. There are now 135,718 QSOs in the log....Thank you for all your kind comments on the DXpedition and your good wishes for the team's safe return. I have passed these on and they have been much appreciated by the team."With those words the pilot station of 3B7C wrote the epilogue of this tremendous dxpedition. In our island, Zante, 6 stations have worked them. Their calls are: SV8CS 24, SV8RX 23, SV8KOK 10, SV8DOU 8, SV8KOM 8 and SV8AXZ 1. The first 5 of them succeeded to get in the 100 Greek list. All these days, that it lasted, we had a lot of fun, trying to work as many slots as possible. We are all good friends and during this contest type event we had a lot of bets. So we are going to meet now to analyze the results and celebrate our achievement drinking lager.
And now what is next? What else the huge CQ WW RTTY Contest during this weekend. So I have again to shout the well known cry: See you in the pile ups!!!

Hunting 3B7C

What an expedition! It looks like a road roller. Too many stations active simultaneously in all bands in all modes for as long as 18 days. They have as a target to beat the 168,772 QSO record of D68C. I think they have good possibilities to succeed. The huge amount of equipment, big antennas, linears, and the plenty of very experienced operators guarantee big scores for sure.

“Our strategy is to run maximum power on as many bands as possible. We will have big monoband antennas on all bands 30m to 6m and verticals on the remaining bands. This way we will be heard everywhere in the world at some time of the day or night. We will also be active for around 18 days covering three weekends. By adopting this strategy we should be able to give at least one contact to anyone who wants one anywhere in the world.”

With these words describe their plan the 5 stars DX group (http://www.3b7c.com/). It is a very well organized expedition indeed.

So far they are working perfectly with absolute control of frequencies and QSO running. They are far away comparing with similar expeditions. I put here a list with bands I have already worked, with the notation that we are just at the beginning. There are 12 days left.

By the way they have promised digital modes after 15 of September. It deserves a special note the way they present their online logs and statistics. It gives a contest spirit to hams they want to work them. Good luck with them. See you on the pile ups.

Goodbye summer

Summer is dragging its last days. After three periods of high temperatures and the biggest fires that stroke Greece last 100 years, it is going to live us, fortunately. This week, temperature dropped dramatically to 15-20 degrees, quite low for the season in Greece. Anyway this weather development gave us the signal to leave cottage and come back to main QTH.

During summer only a little ham radio activity took place. The portable situation, you can see the wire antennas on the picture, does not give many possibilities during low propagation periods. So we continue the 6 meters marathon. We got 42 countries this year. Not bad. Next year we will go better. We also participate in the SARGT RTTY contest. It was a nice experience indeed. We made 230 qso, as a multiband operator. Lots of exotic callsigns were heard and worked, even with portable conditions.

By the way the ACOM1000 returned strong and healthy. It took only a week to be fixed and come back. The problem was a leakage of a capacitor in the main PCB (the picture shows these capacitors). Not a big deal indeed. As I had commented, it had to pass through children’s illnesses before go to real service. But the ACOM service was quite fast and friendly. My compliments to Stan (LZ1IU) and his great company. Now I feel ready for the WW CQ RTTY contest at 29-30 of September weekend.