Antennas for upcoming Spratly DXpedition 9M4SLL
An upcoming DXpedition (7-13 August) to Spratly Island 9M4SLL will consist of John 9M6XRO and Steve 9M6DXX who will be operating from a dive resort that closes at the end of August and doesn’t re-open until April.
Not optimum for the low bands but they stand a good chance of being louder on the higher bands than 9M0L.
Announcements on the various DX websites don’t offer much info in the way of what antennas will be in use but John was kind enough to take time to answer my questions via email:
We are going with two vertical antennas and we hope to put them as close as possible to the sea :(1) 9M6DXX has an HF6V-X with the 17/12m add-on kit so it covers 10-80m.(2) The second vertical will be based on the 43′ Vertical Monopole described in the July 2012 QST. It will have separate 5/8-wave vertical wires for each HF band from 10 to 20m with an ATU at the base. These wires will “float” when not in use, that is to say, only one will be connected to the ATU at a time (unlike a fan dipole). The same ATU will also allow us to match it on 30/40m.We will have an extension wire connected to the top of the 43′ vertical section to make it up to a 1/4-wave inverted L on 80. That extension wire will drop down vertically and be connected to the base of the 43′ vertical section when not in use for 80m.We will have a good number of radials laid on the ground for both ant systems.I have a Titanex V-160E but when we received permission from the Malaysian Govt it was too late to get it out there on a supply boat.
The 9M0L team used Spiderbeams and weren’t too loud at my QTH. 4W6A used verticals and were strong enough here to allow me to work them on 10, 12, 30, 40 and 80 meters with my dipole.
Thanks for the info, John, and have fun!
.
.
Themocracy
The only way to have a QSO with this area is on the low bands for me. Too close for higher bands. 4W6A had better condx than 9M0L, and John and Steve are more experienced to manage the kind of conditions you have on an island like that.
All I hope is that the Chinese don’t decide to start the World War III this time.
The 4W6A team was on in September – only a month later than this group will be – and were quite loud on the low bands. I’m hoping conditions will be better than anticipated. And I’ve worked John enough times to know how good an op he is with the pile-ups he’ll be generating…too bad he can’t be cloned into 5 or 6 additional ops!
For a better description and photo of 80m antennas at 4W6A, scroll about 2/3rds of the way down this page:
http://www.ae5x.com/blog/2012/02/02/misc-de-treed-yagi-capacitance-meter-and-80m-dxing-at-the-far-end/