[amsat-bb] ND9M/MM - Grid QL91

[Clary, James T, Civilian]

Greetings from the Eastern Edge of the World!

 

My ship is currently midway between Guam and the International Date
Line, heading east on a great circle toward southern California. 

 

We'll hit the IDL this weekend, which means (for us on the ship) that
we'll get to work Saturday twice! It will give us a whole new view of
the term "three day weekend", hi.

 

Anyway, from what SatPC32 tells me, I should be able to hit KH6 on AO51
as well as KL7 and the US Left Coast on AO7 starting tomorrow (17 Feb).

 

So far since leaving Diego Garcia on 26 Jan, my sat ops have been mostly
on AO51, but I've also been on SO50, AO7, VO52, and FO29. (AO27 wasn't
available at those latitudes.) The linear sats haven't been all that
productive mainly because of a much lower number of sat ops that have
equipment capable of working SSB or CW on those birds. (FM is used on
VO52 regularly in south central Asia to get those with FM-only HTs on
that sat.)

 

We passed through the islands of YB, 9M, and DU, and then stopped for a
couple days at KH2. AO51 got a big workout every day, but it wasn't
because of ham activity. There is an extremely heavy non-ham population
using 2M rigs for local chit-chat; anyone transmitting on 145.920 at the
wrong time wound up hitting the satellite, and there was a lot of them.

 

I enjoyed working the hams in eastern and southeastern Asia throughout
my two-week transit, but the non-ham "ops" made it extremely difficult
for any hams to make contacts on AO51 when the footprint covered JA and
western YB. The QRM that I hear on AO51 when I'm in the US and that's
complained about so often on the BB doesn't begin to compare with what I
heard over the last couple weeks.

 

The local hams have brought the QRM problem to the attention of their
respective national societies, but they haven't had any success yet in
reducing the problem.

 

Meanwhile I'm looking forward to working North and South America again.
I'm usually on during the afternoon passes, but now that the Americas
will be "ahead" of my QTH as far as the clock is concerned, I'll
hopefully be QRV for at least some morning passes as well. With luck,
I'll also be able to sneak in an AO27 pass or two once we get closer to
land.

 

73 for now,

 

Jim, ND9M / VQ9JC

Grid QL91 / GMT +11