LF!
After beeing visible in South America some have asked me what i'm
planning next. 6 continents are "worked" now from here (one-way, TX)
which is titled as a WAC by R7NT (ex. RU6LA). He updated his LF history
page at http://136.73.ru/h_history/index.htm
Now, which challenge next?
The Antarctica does not count as a continent which can be worked it
seems. No one is living there permanently... Anyway! There is a German
research base which is permanently in operated by the
Alfred-Wegner-Institut in Bremerhafen, http://www.awi.de/en/home/
The research base is the Neumayer3 Station,
http://www.awi.de/en/infrastructure/stations/neumayer_station/
The locator seems to be IB59UI87 ,
http://no.nonsense.ee/qthmap/?qth=IB59UI87 , just 13433 km distant from
here :-) In this time of the year the common dark time from EU is 9
hours which sounds quite good. However the path passes a high QRN region
in AF, see
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/6000/6679/global_lightning_lrg.jpg
Probably 2 hops will be in Africa but the rest is across salt water!
What do the experts say, will this be realistic? (also regarding the
south-auroral-oval)
At least i decided to start a request to the institute and asked for a
contact to the radio operator of the base. From the uni-heidelberg
adress this seems to be an easy task and so it took not even 2 days
until i got an answer from the radio operator of the base. An antarctic
email, this was the first exciting point for me! Of course the radio
operator is a ham too, Lars/DL1LLL. They operate a amateur radio club
station from there, DP0GVN. See some pictures from there at
http://www.dl1lll.de/ Excellent location i find. And i assume it is
most likely that there is no QRM from the neighbours :-)
As expected, he is not only the radio operator but also the IT expert
and electrician. They operate a webcam from there so probably the
intenet is no problem! I was surprised. They seem to have a satelite
flatrate :-)
How long will it take until we have a LF grabber in the Antarktica? :-)
As expected they have a well sorted electronic lab and Lars seem to have
a good electronic knowledge so it will be no problem to build a preamp
or a active antenna or whatever. They have 2 HF TRX which hopefully
operate down to 137 kHz. It is a TS-480 and a FT-450. Does someone has
some experience with this RX' on LF?
So far they are quite fixed to HF but i'll see what i can do. :-)
That may be also a good message for the few LF stations in Argentinia
which is in "only" 5000 km from there...
73, Stefan/DK7FC
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