Click here for RSS feeds or use the email signup form below to be notified about new radio-sport.net news updates
Donations are accepted. We appreciate the help!
Because my XYL has lots of family in Thailand and because of my now 40-year-long relationship with the Radio Amateur Society of Thailand, I have managed to operate the CQWW CW from Thailand with my Thai call HS0ZAR in three of the last five contests.
I could have joined the gang at RAST club station HS0AC, which now operates from improved quarters aided by a grant from the YASME Foundation, but I was offered the use of good stations where I could do a single operator effort by John, HS1CHB in 2004, and by Det, E21YDP in 2005 and 2007.
Thailand is reasonably rare and when the conditions are right you can generate decent runs from there, but there are long periods during the 48-hour marathon when propagation doesn't give you many options.
The most reliable propagation to an area with a major ham population is to Japan, but in the CQWW the JA's are worth only one point.
This makes it hard to compete with fellow Asians in places like UA9 and 4X4 who are only a comparative stone's-throw from three-point Europeans.
Because the Siam DX Group's computers don't like the TR-LOG program I prefer, I opted to do the contests the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper.
In the CQWW it's not hard to do big runs this way because all you really need to do is log the call of the station you are working and put the time down every ten minutes or so.
I also log the received zone when the station is in an area where I'm not sure what the zone might be, like in the case of UA9s. Since when I'm in Thailand I'm on holiday, I type in the log on my mother-in-law's PC after the contest is over.
But not having computer logging as an aid means you lose your dupe-checking and multiplier-checking capabilities, so the primary rule then becomes: "Run whenever you can."
From Thailand the contest starts at 0700 Saturday local time. For the first hour 40 is open to Europe and surprisingly, to the Caribbean.
The HS0AR rotary dipole for 40 up at about 27 meters really plays and this is the time to pick up Caribbean and North African mults right at the start, when everybody needs everybody and they haven't yet generated massive pile-ups.
After that you go to 15 or 20 and beam Japan. Mixed in with the JAs are the occasional USA West Coast, South American or Pacific Island stations.
At about 0300 UTC it pays to check 10 meters which at this point in the cycle will have scratchy openings to Japan and better openings to China, Indonesia and other close-by countries with their relatively sparse ham populations. At least you can move through the band and get a few mults.
Continue to read K3ZO's article
"For those thinking of DXpeditions in a "rare" country I prefer the approach of finding an existing station over there to use, rather than having to take a bunch of gear along," Laun said.
"There are "rent-a-shacks" in many places these days, and if one wishes to reward the ham whose place he uses it's often more practical to take along some useful accessories or programs to give to the host rather than bulky gear."
