[NCDXA] VP6D - Ducie Island Grant

[Phillip Barsky]

Gene,   We have canvassed the membership of the National Capitol DX
Association and have come up with a few suggestions for you.

1) No leader board, which would preclude the big guns trying to work Ducie
Is on every band and mode.
2) Have one station on 20 at all times to provide probably the best band
for communication between US and Ducie.
3) Some DX stations just ask for only stations needing an ATNO to call.
(They typically do this on last day or two of operations). They then
refused to respond to the big guns, but responded , fairly well, only to
“modest” stations that called. I would recommend this when conditions peak
between Ducie and other a specific area on all days.
4) The logging programs could be set up so that they flag stations that
have made contact on any band or mode before. The operator could make it
clear that only those stations that have yet to have a contact will be
worked.
5) As far as what is a modest station: 100W and wire antennas are modest.
As one of these modest stations and having been piled-up on when in VP2M 2
years ago, there is a technique for picking these modest stations out.
Listen where the din of the pileup* stops* and go .200-.500 KC above the
top end .  I have successfully logged all major DX peditions for the past 4
years using this technique. As DX, ( HL9 in 69-70 and VP2M in 2015) I have
tuned past the din and looked for these small stations just above the end
of the pileup. Now I work a couple of these small stations in the clear
until the crowd finds me and then I zoom back into the pileup looking for
relatively thin pileup freq to pick out calls from.
6)-AS to QRP-ers;   ASK everyone else to QRX and just call qrpers- 5W or
less- Please do this again at peak signal times - you can ask them to go 10
or even 20 up so you can easily find them.

Hope these suggestions help to guide your efforts.  Here's to us all
working you and best of luck on the DXpedition. 200Hz BW on CW anyone??

73  Phil K3EW


On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 8:07 AM, Gene K5GS <k5gs at pdxg.net> wrote:

> Hi Phil,
>
> Thanks for the note.
>
> I've already planted this seed with the leadership team, will discuss at
> the next team call:
>
> I'd like to offer the DX community some operating time for only those that
> need Ducie for an ATNO,  and only low power stations. Both of these tend to
> be on the "honor system" as we have no way to know if the OP is really low
> power or ATNO. Even if we see the call in our log once, that's not a good
> indicator, could be a busted call or the OP didn't log it. Of course, the
> other callers need some discipline and stop calling.
>
> My original thought was QRP, 5 watts or lower, but one EU guy suggested
> maybe 20 watts and lower. With most rigs being 100 watts, maybe that's the
> number? I'm not a QRP guy and don't know their protocol (if there is one)