YB Land DX Club DX-ing Is Our Life
VK9CZ DXpedition to the Cocos Keeling Islands (OC-003) 30th March 2013 → 13th April 2013
Cocos Keeling 
Australia 
Scotland 
About Cocos Keeling
More information to follow ….
VK9CZ – QSL information
VK9CZ – Equipment
We intend to run two 400W stations for as many hours per day as possible.
Main radios – Elecraft K3 and Yaesu FT-450D
Back-up radios (+ RTTY) – Yaesu FT-840 and Icom IC-735
Tokyo HyPower HL-1.1KFX amplifier (4 x SD2933 MOSFETs) – kindly loaned by Gavin GM0GAV. 600W output from a 9.5kg package, specially designed for lightweight DXpedition use. Click here for more information.
Homebrew G3PJT amplifier
2 x Lenovo S10-3 netbooks plus another laptop – on a LAN running WinTest 4.10.0 in DXpedition mode
plus many kgs of other essential items like Heil headsets, USB external keyboards, SWR bridge, TV high pass filter, etc.
VK9CZ – Antennas
Antennas are the key to success on any DXpedition – especially when you are 15000km from the U.S.A.
We are a bit old-fashioned (some might say obsessive!) when it comes to antennas. All VK9CZ antennas will be resonant antennas for best results – no ATUs, traps, coils or linear loading devices will be used. All VK9CZ antennas will be on the beach as close as possible to the ocean (in or over the water if possible!)
Having all monoband resonant antennas leads to somewhat difficult choices – antennas have to be : fed directly with 50 ohm coax, to have <1.2:1 SWR i.e. >21dB return loss (ideally at both the CW and SSB ends of the band), be lightweight, ideally have some gain/directivity, be easily installed.
The weight of coax cable is also an important consideration – for example 20m of RG213U weighs 3.3kg. VK9CZ has about 180m of coax – mostly Aircell7. We are taking 10 Spiderbeam and other fibreglass poles as antenna supports and there are palm trees at the water’s edge which we hope to use.
The VK9CZ antenna line-up is shown below – at any given time we hope to have 6 or 7 of these antennas available to use immediately for band changes, with the other antennas assembled but lying on the ground for quick installation. This all depends on how much space is available of course :
Band Antenna
RX antennas Beverage and FO0AAA RX loop
160m Inverted-L with 1 elevated radial
80m Marconi Tee with 2 elevated radials
60m Inverted-vee (temporary)
40m Quarter-wave vertical with 2 elevated radials
30m Quarter-wave vertical with 2 elevated radials
20m Vertical 2-element Moxon
17m Vertical 2-element Moxon
15m Vertical 2-element Moxon
12m Vertical 2-element Moxon
10m Vertical 2-element Moxon
VK9CZ – Software
VK9CZ will use the excellent Win-Test 4.10.0 logging software in DXpedition mode – 2 networked PCs for extra logging security.
Pete G4CLA has written special software to allow real-time logging via ClubLog and an interactive Google map – this will only be used if the Wi-fi signal is strong enough (we are taking a Wi-fi range extender but are not too hopeful about being able to use real-time logging)
On RTTY, WinTest will control MMTTY 1.68A
This simple website was constructed by GM3WOJ using Microsoft Expression Web
