3B7 St Brandon Archipelago DX Pedition

[4L5A]

3B7A Saint Brandon Island DX Pedition News 12 April 2018

The propagation is sometimes capricious on the higher bands. This day was less intense especially on 10 and 12 with much weaker signals. During the coming night we will continue to operate on 17 and 20m until they close with NA, before switching to the lower bands. Last night was good on 160m with in particular with many JA at their SR. We will renew the same plan tonight.

This day we met the Mauritian coast guard stationed on Saint Brandon. The South island is not big but we had not yet had the time to venture to the other side. We were able to share with passion and share with him our experiences of Tromelin and Juan de Nova. Those expedition’s conditions were quite similar in terms of fauna and flora.

We are now about halfway through the expedition. The efforts are paying off and the results are in line with our objectives. As from the beginning we will continue to give everyone the opportunity to achieve at least a qso with Saint Brandon.

The plan will be clarified in the next few days, but it is likely that we will partially dismount the antennas on Sunday 15 in the day. Six members of the team will take the boat to Mauritius on Monday the 16th while 2 operators will stay in Saint Brandon one more day with a minimum setup.

[4L5A]

3B7A News 12 April 2018

Big rains with strong winds generated a lot of parasitic noise and did not allow us to be present on 160m yesterday. However the 30/40m and sometimes the 80m were excellent, especially with the Americas. This area is currently the most difficult to contact and will remain the target of our efforts. The openings are relatively short compared to Europe or Japan. We sometimes hear a bit of frustration from Europe when we ask for NA Only but you have to understand that the EU openings are much frequent and longer, and with much better signals. The NA QSOs currently represent 16% against 25% JA and 57% EU.

The days follow each other but are not alike. The high bands are much better than yesterday with long openings to the EU and Asia up to 10m. Strong tides forced us to some maintenance on the antennas which were a little too close to the shore. We have further refined our different receiving systems for the lower bands.

For tonight and tomorrow we will continue our efforts on 17 and 20m until their closure, then 30 and 40m. The 80 and 160 will also be activated from our SS to give new chances to the JA.

We remain focused on our objectives and adapt our strategy on a daily basis to increase the number of “unique” callsigns, and give a chance to the most difficult areas. At the same time we will be on the low bands as much as possible.

The team starts of course to feel the fatigue beacuse a lack of sleep, radios shifts, maintenance of the site, but we are more than ever extremely motivated!

[4L5A]

3B7A Saint Brandon DX Pedition News 13 April 2018

It’s the final chapter ! Monday morning the first 6 members of the team will leave Saint Brandon for Mauritius. This weekend is the last highlight of the expedition. Guillaume F4FET and Diego F4HAU will stay one more day on the island before leaving it with all the equipments. From Sunday we will gradually dismount our setup before going totally QRT 3B7A during the night from Monday to Tuesday.

In the meantime, our motivation remains at its maximum and we are all mobilized to contact you. We will maximize the chances of giving you a new one by emphasizing the most suitable bands such as 20m. We do not specifically ask for those who need an “atno”, as the number of qso already made on these bands implies that more modest setups can now also do a contact. We also continue, of course, to point the traffic by geographical areas according to the propagation and the information you provide to your pilots.

[4L5A]

3B7A News 14 April 2018

The 60,000 Qso bar has just been crossed! We did not set a target quantity but quality and we are very happy. With only 8 operators for 9 days, it confirms that we were not idle. This of course taking into account that we also manage the maintenance of the generators and the camp in general, the food, the tuning of the antennas, etc. we did not sleep much.

Our transmissions continue and the number of “unique” goes up gradually. This will remain our focus until the end, especially by keeping on air a permanent station on 20m SSB. Still based on the information of our pilots we are testing new slots of opening to South America particularly, sometimes with success. This again emphasizes the importance of the information you provide them.

We will begin the dismantling of some antennas tomorrow during the day while keeping a maximum of active stations. This night will be the last on 80 and 160m.

Count on us not to let go and give all our strength in this last straight line!

[4L5A]

3B7A Saint Brandon Islands New 15 April 2018

Conditions were sad enough for this day of departure, so a little in tune with our state of mind as we leave Saint Brandon. The weather was very bad with heavy rain, wind, and a local phenomenon of mini tidal waves. This constrained us to QRX the time to secure our antennas and equipment.

The propagation was also capricious all day long with high bands not quite open until mid-afternoon. The surprise of the day will undoubtedly that we have been able to contact some NA stations on 12m! This gives us some hope for the latst night with the whole team. We will continue our efforts until the departure of the boat at sunrise. A new symbolic cap of 70,000 Qso seems to be in the line of fire!

The 80 and 160m antennas were dismountes this morning after a good last night on these two bands. Some JA were able to be contacted on 160 with very good signals coming at the time of our sunset, as for the NA they had to wait for our SR but many could again be logged.

To summarize now the overall planning 3B7, 6 members of the team leave the South Island tomorrow Monday at dawn, this marks the first end of the expedition. However, 3B7A will remain sporadically on the air for two days as F4FET Guillaume and F4HAU Diégo will take another boat on Wednesday morning. They will keep with them antennas for all bands (except 80/160) and two stations. They will no longer be able to update the log and it will be necessary to wait until Thursday to find the final version on Clublog. After corrections, we will open QSL requests via OQRS.

Last night so for the majority of us, I immediately return to the pile-ups to continue to give you an opportunity to contact Saint Brandon.

[4L5A]

The first part of the team is now safe back in Mauritius Island. Diego and Guillaume have just stopped and 3B7A went QRT at 17 :30z with 71 158 QSO in the log. They will leave Saint Brandon tomorrow morning with the equipment and the last log.

Once they’ll arrive, we will upload the complete log on Clublog and open the OQRS system after the corrections.

The team team will stay a few days in Mauritus to fill the crates with our equipment and ship them to France. We are also planning to meet some other hamradio on the island.

(L. to R. on the picture : F4BKV, F8ATM, F5PTM, F5UFX, F2DX, F5CWU)

[4L5A]

3B7A Saint Brandon Islands DX Pedition News 20 April 2018

I’m writing these words now the entire team is safe back in Mauritius. Of course our very first priority has been to give news to our family after 2 weeks without any exchange.

The team is quite tired after such an intense adventure, but we are very satisfied. After months of preparation everything goes as planned, result of so much work and a flawless organization. Of course, we will study statistics in detail, but we are quite satisfied by the overall results. Many have been able to log Saint Brandon as a new DXCC. Other people have filled one or more bands/modes slots. Our team was quite small with only 8 peoples, for a short duration of 10 days, managing food, maintenance, and the radio, better say immediately we haven’t slept much!

We knew propagation was not at his best and it has been confirmed on the air. All days were different giving various openings. High bands only gave propagation to Europe, Japan and Africa. The final repartition of QSO is the perfect reflect of this reality. Our efforts oriented to the most difficult areas helped to balance the different percentage by continent.

From a global point of view, Europe and Japan had the best conditions on all bands. Regarding America, we had not to miss any opening and pay a very special attention to maximize chances. This was one of our main priority. Daily information from our pilot’s stations helped us to adapt our strategy and identify some short openings with VK-ZL or SA for example.

We have received so many emails from you. All of them confirm your satisfaction, thank you so much for these kind words. Like for every expedition a few of them mention too fast cw, too slow cw, too much rtty, not enough ft8, missed openings, etc. The most interesting comments will be part of our debriefing and will help us to improve our strategies for any possible future project. We have now left Saint Brandon with the confidence of the “accomplished mission”, accordingly with our announced objectives.

After Tromelin and Juan de Nova we have now discovered another great island. “L’ile du Sud” is home for very important wildlife in the Indian Ocean. We have been lucky privileged spectators during these few days: Turtles, Macoua, Sternes, rabbits, etc. We gave a very special attention so our mission does not disturb wildlife at all by choosing carefully the location of each antenna or cable, watching at each move around the island. Our previous experiences have been a great advantage. We have also met some interesting people on the island: coast-guards, fishermen, a globe-trotter.

Then, certainly the most important point, the team has been incredible one more time, working like one man, with countless effort from the first to the very last minute. The human experience has been outstanding and will remain in our memories. None of us imagine a final end of our team, but this will certainly be another story…

Our first thanks are of course for our families for their continuous support. Thanks to all of you for your personal of clubs/foundations donations, they are a condition to make such projects possible. The quality of the equipment provide by some sponsors also had a major role to provide strong signals, reliable setups corresponding with our needs. The SunSDR2 pro by Expert Electronics have really been a game changer for us. All the team get familiar with them very easily and we cannot imagine a new project without them, associated with our Modmics provided by PileupDX they were just perfect. The antenna parts was one more time supported by Spiderbeam. The different RX systems were by DXengineering, Low Band Systems and Batima. Then everything was connect by our lightweight high performance coaxial cables by Messi and Paoloni.

Special thanks also to: F6AGM, LU5FF, ON9CFG, N6PSE, JJ3PRT, F8DQL, F4DSE, DX AVENUE, K6TU, VOACAP, QSL Concept, Raphael Fishing, E-Sat, for their support.

OQRS will soon be open so you can request your QSL card. We strongly recommend to use this system for you direct or buro request, we don’t need your paper cards. LOTW will also be uploaded in the coming weeks.

73’s de F5UFX Seb, for the entire team.

3B7A QRT, VA