- [UPDATE] –
After 8 days of activity 9L5A has crossed the symbolic milestone of 100,000 QSOs, more than half of which are CW and SSB. We will start dismantling the antennas tomorrow (Saturday, December 7) – our last day of traffic. We will stop by the end of the afternoon to finish dismantling and spend the evening repacking everything, and Sunday morning we will go to the airport.
- [DECEMBER 5] –
Nice video production by team leader, Patrick, F2DX showcasing the 15 ops @ 9L5A ! Remember to visit ther Facebook page and website for more info and pictures. As of 2000z, December 5th, team had over 95K QSOs in the log – check here for yours.
- [DECEMBER 4] –
As there are many complaints about our log from live streaming ("DATA” vs. "FT8” mode among others), it looks necessary to remind that we regularly update manually our log by overwriting the one coming from the live streaming. Some QSOs do not appear live but will be there after the next manual update which is now daily. So no need to send a multitude of messages that we don’t have time to process while we’re on an expedition.
Apart from that, the days follow one another with more than 10,000 QSOs per day with an almost perfect balance between CW, SSB and FT8. It looks so surprising compared to other expeditions that some criticize us for doing too much CW and SSB; this is a shame! We had announced for a long time that we would prioritize "human” modes, otherwise we would not have planned 15 operators. It would for sure be much easier to leave 6 stations running in FT8 and enjoy long nights of sleep, the beach and 31° water, we would already have exceeded 100,000 QSOs. But this is not the vision we have of radio in general and especially an expedition. Given the size of the pileups, there is obviously (and fortunately) a large majority who must think like us.
(Credit: 9L5A)
(Credit: 9L5A)
(Credit: 9L5A)
- [DECEMBER 3] –
On the scene shots at 9L5A – click the pics to view larger size via official website.
9L5A LIVESTREAM LOG
- [DECEMBER 1] –
As our hotel does not have internet and we only use the 4G network, we preferred to be cautious before announcing that we wanted to use Live Streaming because it was necessary to do some testing first. We had a problem at first because FT8 was not present. Since, it worked quite well even if we are not immune to outages due to the instability of the 4G connection. On the other hand, you may have noticed that FT8 QSOs appeared under "DATA”. This is a problem coming from the Club Log interface as on our side they are recorded in FT8. As Live Streaming also feeds our online log, it is not surprising that you will find "FT8” QSOs (those we have uploaded manually) but also QSOs in "DATA” mode (those coming from Live Streaming). Don’t worry, however, we regularly upload the entire log, overwriting the previous one, and everything then backs to normal. Our Live Streaming is available here.
- [NOVEMBER 29] –
Traffic started last night. The last antennas were finally installed today. Our QTH is ideally open to Europe, North America and South America with a direct way over the sea. For the antennas location however, we had to take into account the tide which rises every evening very high leaving almost nothing left of the beach. Our stations are powered by 2 cables of 4 mm² from a 10.5 kVA diesel generator that we have installed. Several photos of the installation have been added to our website.
VISIT THE OFFICIAL 9L5A WEBSITE
