The target of the HA South Pacific Tour is changed to C2, Nauru

We had two focuses on our announced January/February 2012 South Pacific DX Tour: T2 and T30 with possible operation from T33. We are regret to advice that we had to cancel the operation from T2 and T30. That was the bad news.

The good one is that our new target is C2, Nauru.

The reasons of these very last minute changes, which are out of our control, are as follows:

We had to cancel the T30 as the flights from Fiji to Tarawa are suspended since 12 September 2011, due to the air traffic dispute between Kiribati and Fiji. There is high risk to extend the flight disruption for even longer period. After the consultation with the airlines and our consulate in Canberra, we were advised that “there is high risk of not to get to Tarawa or can not leave Tarawa for a long, undefined period of time. This situation does not affect the flights to Tuvalu and Nauru.”

We were waiting until the very last minute hoping that the air traffic dispute between Fiji-Tarawa-Fiji will be solved,  but the flights has not been restarted, yet. 

Tuvalu government declared a nation-wide state of emergency on 28 September 2011 due to critical shortage of drinking water. The state of emergency was declared after existing desalination plants broke, exacerbating an already dire situation. The water crisis is still serious on two of the worse affected islands, the capital island of Funafuti and Nukulaelae. The airlines till do not accept excess baggage at all, including hand luggages, because of the loads of drinking water containers by Red Cross. We could check in less than the third of our technical stuff, resulting significant and unreasonable limitation of the station set up. Due to this restriction we decided to cancel the T2HA Tuvalu operation, as well.

Due to the above detailed situation, we decided to change the target our DX pedition to C2, Nauru. Operation is planned between 10 January and 6 February 2012 as C21HA with two stations on all HF bands.

It was the first time that we asked support and received contribution from DX Foundations, DX Organizations and individuals. We appreciate these supports very much. However we will contact all organizations and individuals who supported us, and will pay the donations back if these changes would make them disappointed, despite Nauru is much better ranked on the most wanted DXCC list.

Yesterday there was a nice opening to EU on the 14 and 17 meters bands. This morning we could log cc 500 NA and SA stations on 10 meter. CT and EA stations have reported that they could hear our signals on 12 meter around 22-23 UTC, but they could not get trough in the massive NA pile-up. It is really amazing. This morning we could log some of them on 12 m. Big surprise.

Top band: still very noisy. We could log only a couple of JA stations, KH2 and KL7 within one hour around the sunset. Difficoult to copy in the strong equatorial noise. This is the same on 80 meter. However we will check the band condition time by time.

Antenna works: we finalized the antennas set up. Only the daily maintenance is required.

Our mail box is flooded with request of log correction, sked and QSL request. Please do not send such a request till we are in the island. Any log correction request has to be addressed to HA5UK after the expedition.

I want to share my worst experience I ever had during my 40 years of ham radio operation.

This morning, between 20-21 UTC we were working with State side on 12 meters band. 1 kHz below of our QRG someone was also making QSOs in our pile-up using and identifying himself with our C21HA call sign.

We know that there are police stations, we know that tuning on the DX QRG can happen, we know that sometime there is interference on the frequency. We know that sometime pirate stations are working. We know that there are fake spots in the clusters, using invalid own callsign (like HA5DX, but we know the IP address). We know that very strong station continuously making QRM on our QRG and/or in the pile-up window. However, this cheeky, insolent attitude of this morning surpass every imagination. No words to classify this person. It is not simple annoying. It is fare beyond the rude, impolite behaviour. It will make lots of stations disappointed, as they may be changed reports with this pirate station. We are sorry about it. Is there anything further down? We spent a lots of our money to make other hams happy putting the C2, Nauru into their log. Whos (bussiness)interest has been disturbed by coming here to this remote Island?

That could help you to indentify the real C21HA: we always working with high speed CW, (35 wpm or more) on the higher bands, with 50 wpm rprt and TU. It may be helps.

Two stations will be on the air, working on CW, SSB, RTTY, SSTV, PSK modes.

Transceivers:  Icom IC-7000

PA: Tokyo Hy-Power HL-1.1KFX solid state linear

Antenna 80-10 m bands: SteppIR BigIR vertical with 80 m coil

Antenna 40-10 m bands: Wire vertical on Spider pole with SGC SG-235 automatic antenna coupler

Antenna 160-80 m bands: Wire vertical on Spider pole with SGC SG-235 automatic antenna coupler, RX: Beverage

Interfaces: microKEYER II

Coat of arms of Nauru National flag of Nauru

The Nauru flag represents the country’s geographical position in the world. The blue field represent the surrounding Pacific Ocean and the clear blue sky. Nauru is located just south (26 miles) of the Equator (the bold yellow line), slightly west of the international dateline (the star is off centered towards the left of the flag). The 12 points on the star symbolize Nauru’s 12 original tribes.

Nauru is the world’s smallest Republic, covering just 21 square kilometres (8 sq mi), oval-shaped island in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, 42 kilometres (26 mi) south of the Equator, with just over 9,322  residents (estimate in July 2010). It is the second least-populated country after Vatican City. The island is surrounded by a coral reef, which is exposed at low tide and dotted with pinnacles. The reef is bounded seaward by deep water, and on the inside by a sandy beach.

•  Full name: The Republic of Nauru

•  Population: 9,322 (July 2010 estimate)

•  Capital: no official capital; government offices in Yaren District

•  Area: 21 sq km ( 8 sq miles) 

•  Major language: English, Nauruan (official, a distinct Pacific Island language)

•  Life expectancy: 61 years (men), 68 years (women) (UN)

• Head of state: The president, who is also head of the government.

• Time zone: UTC+12

CQ Zone: 31

IOTA: OC-031

More detailed information available here.