Andaman

So far this DX pedition has proven to be a real disappointment. They have been foraging in large pileups on 17 and 20 but have barely taken the time to go lower, and when they do the US is largely in daylight.

Here is the 40M "attempt" this morning


They showed up on the band at 7:59 EDT when about 1/3 of the US was already in daylight and here is the resultant "pile up". I heard them for a few minutes before they faded in this opening. If they had been here 30 minutes earlier (as in sunset is approaching ) I may have actually heard them well enough to work them.


There is a LP opening starting around 19:30 EDT and proceeding for about an hour and most of the time (as I have chronicled in the past here and here) they don't stay on long enough to even make it to the gray line. One would think that some planning would have gone into gray line operations but apparently not. Its actually pretty simple: When sunrise is approaching, while still in darkness, you switch a couple of the stations down to 160, 80, and 40. When sunset is approaching, while still in daylight, you do the same thing. It's not rocket science.

The cost of the DX pdeition is about $35,000. If you go to their website the first thing you are greeted with is a pretty much in your face DONATE page. Most DX peditions don't open with a donate page, but its fair enough. The guy collecting the money lives in Ann Arbor, MI. Interesting it's not some guy in Germany or Japan, or India for that matter. You would think 11 guys who want their exotic vacation paid for by what it would seem is mostly US dollars, would plan a little better to entice those who they expect to pay for that exotic vacation.

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