RI1AND Novolazarevskaya Base Antartica

I've been hearing Mikhail RI1AND the past few days on various bands.  Tonight I heard him on 40M working simplex and decided to give him a call

I'm the blue dot at the top of the globe.  Although its only 8100 miles it still looks pretty impressive.  

This is a shot of the base camp

And the world map

He was a good S4 to 5 with polar fading and answered me in one call so I bet his noise level is nil.  Nice QSO and another notch on the new post hurricane Matthew vertical.  Tnx Mikhail

73  W9OY

ZL7G Chatham Islands

Down New Zeland way are the Chatham Islands

ZL7G is out there tearing it up.  17,000 Q's so far, good ops!  I've got them on 40 and 30 trying out my new verticals.  This morning was in one call, on 40M, on my way out the door to work.  30 was a little harder a couple nights ago.  Notice not much of a pileup.

The bands here are pretty quiet.  They were at least an S unit out of the noise, which was about -109 dBm this morning on the new antenna.  

73  W9OY

XT2AW Burkina Faso

Hurricane Matthew hit us with some 100 mph gusts.  Fortunately the storm was just offshore when it passed this way.  

I live in a bit of radio heaven.  My QTH is the blue dot on the mid-left of the pic and I'm 2 miles from the Indian River and a 270 degree horizon of water (at least from a first hop perspective.)

I live out in the sticks.  The little hand points to the dark spot where I live

BUT when a hurricane comes there is nowhere to hide.  My QTH is on a virtual FL mountain.  Even though I'm only 2 miles in my QTH is 34ft ASL and one of the highest spots around so I'm not worried about storm surge.  My issue is wind.  When Charlie came in 2004 I had 100 ton of oak and pine to deal with.  This time it was my flame thrower verticals.  I had 1/4 wave 160 inv-L, full size 80M 1/4 wave, a custom end fed 1/2 wave on 40 fed with a home brew parallel network, 5/8 on 30M and 5/8 on 20M.  Each antenna was fed separately with an automatic band switching relay driven by BCD from the Flex 6xxx radio.  My amp was also driven by the same BCD line so I could basically point and shoot a low angle DX signal pretty much anywhere.  My logging software DXLab, speaks directly to the Flex so when a spot comes up I click it and have at it.  

Matt put me out of business so I spent the past week rebuilding.  I presently have 1/4 160 inv-L, a wire 80M 1/4 wave which parallels the vertical portion of the L, a 1/4 wave 40M vert, and a 1/4 30M vert, all still point and shoot.  My ground plane is 4000 ft of #14 with lengths of 50ft, 60ft, 100ft and a few really long ones pointed toward EU and Asia.  XT2AW Burkina Faso was my inaugural 40M  contact.   I also worked Mali on 80M and Suriname on 160.  The pileups were easily broken.  30 was deader n a door nail but I worked TL0A and ZL7G on that band a couple nights ago so I think the antenna on that band will fly also.  I don't think this antenna is quite as good as my last but it has the advantage that I can drop everything to the ground in about 10 minutes including my RX loops by myself.  This is called peace of mind.  SOOO, W9OY is back on the air!!

73  W9OY

E6AC Niue

Worked E6AC on Niue while waiting to hear H44GC in the Solomons.  I worked them on 40M and 30M with good signals on both bands

Niue is out in the South Pacific 

A video of E6AC on the 6700

73  W9OY

D66D Comoros

Satellite image of Comoros Is

Comoros is off the coast of Mozambique 

One call on my 6700/ALS 1300 and my dipole.  I was surprised my dipole was slightly better than my vertical.  He was peaking -97 dBm, good solid signal but the band was a little unstable

73  W9OY

ZP/ZP1P Albania

The True DXing Group is on from Albania

Worked them tonight on 40M while sipping some coffee: nice sigs, good ops, laid back pileup

73  W9OY

TO5FP Saint Pierre & Miquelon

Here is one I didn't know about, TO5FP Saint Pierre & Miquelon (FP).  It is an archipelago of 8 French islands off the coast of Canada.  They have a nice write up on QRZ.com

Big S9 signal, up 1, on 40M.  Good ops working everybody.  They are working 80-10 

73  W9OY