Interview with 3Y0J Team Co-Leader Ken LA7GIA.
"Everything is OK in the camp. The guys are good. We have a few antennas up.
Running some pileups and preparing for the storm which will arrive in a few
hours and last until Thursday. The boat will pull away from the island a
bit. The antennas and camp are being secured. The winds are expected to be
60 knots. 9 members will stay in the camp during the storm. They will try to
run two bands this evening and tomorrow. They will take down one antenna.
They will run 30m and 17m using the Spider Pole on 17 and the aluminum DX
Engineering antenna on 30m.
The operation has proved to be extremely difficult. The most extreme
expedition I've been to. Setting up the camp has been a lot of work.
We will focus on CW and phone but there will be FT8. We have just discussed
this today. We are running low power, only 100w. We have no amplifiers. We
have three antennas set up. We are considering setting up 20m as well. So we
will have 30, 20, 17, 15.
The beach landings were accomplished by holding onto a line attached to a
buoy and floating 15 meters to the beach in our survival suits. This is
quite extreme. We float in all the equipment as well. Then carry the
equipment 800 feet up to the camp. We have videos of this. We spent a few
days to set up the antennas and tent then prepared for the storm that is
coming.
Everybody is in good shape. It's quite hard to stay here. A lot of wind, but
today was a quiet, nice, and sunny day . This will change, and there will be
a lot of rain. The day we arrived was a lot of wind and rain. Activating
Bouvet is not like activating an island in the Caribbean. It is really
windy, cold, and exhausting to bring equipment up here. It's a different
DXpedition than we thought we should do. It's a challenge, but we hope we
can stay on the island for some more days.
Regarding dupes, please only call us if you hear us. We have very good
receive here on Bouvet Island. We do not have any facility to upload the log
on the island. We are saving on fuel and connection for this. When we get
back to the vessel, we will likely upload. We don't know when the first
upload will be. Going to Marama is very time consuming project because of
the procedure involved. (Ken describes it.) The first upload may be in the
weekend. Again, if you don't hear us, don't call us.
Nothing more to report. Hopefully people understand the complexity of this
operation. Hopefully we will be able to stay another 7 to 10 days. We are
working on plans for how to continue the operation despite the difficult
weather conditions here at Bouvet."
Larry Macionski