Video - 6O6O - Somalia

[4L5A]

Video announcement 6O6O Somalia DX Pedition.

More information on:
6O6O Somalia

[4L5A]

6O6O News
Not all luggage arrived. We hope to put up some RX antennas tomorrow. High noise on 40 and 20m.

[4L5A]

The 160m antenna, the beam and the BigIr will arrive tonight with truck, as they did not fit the aircraft.
We're still running on the backup antennas until then.
We plan install a RX antenna for EU/NA today.
Yesterday we had S9+ noise on 40m.
After 20 utc even 20m and 30m were noise free.
We also have online clublog, so please no dupes.

[4L5A]

6O6O News
Ken, LA7GIA inform dxnews.com that they install antennas for 160m today and tmw they will finish beverage antennas and will QRV tmw on 160m.
You can see noise level on 40m at 6O6O.

[4L5A]

6O6O News 4 January 2018 21.10 GMT
Ken, LA7GIA is inform dxnews.com that probably they will be not on 160 and 80m tmw because their main goal now is to reduce noise level to improve RX.
They hope with beverages they will be able to do it and as soon as they will fix it they will appear on Low Bands.

[4L5A]

6O6O News from Kenneth, LA7GIA
We found the noise source. Its a soccer stadium 300m from hotel. When lights were switched off at 20 utc noise dropped from S5 on 20 and 30m to S0 and from S9++ to S5 on 40m. Tonight at 10 pm we got all our bags delivered by truck. We install a proper beverage tomorrow. Tomorrow we also setup the beam for 20-10 and hence 12+10m antenna.

[4L5A]

6O6O News Photos

[4L5A]

We've had some issues with the hotel abt our installation. 80m full size vertical is installed today. Beverage is also installed. The 20-10m beam is running. We also have the BigIR installed. We will try 80m later. No 160m yet. The soccer stadium switch on the lights at our SS 15UTC and switch them off at abt 20 UTC. After 20 UTC we will be on low bands.

[4L5A]

6O6O News 7 January 2018

6O6O shack - with a very "comfortable" seating.
Tonight we will be on 30+40m and maybe 20m to NA , QRV depend on noise level.

[4L5A]

6O6O News 8 January 2018
So we have several noise sources. One is the stadium light that is switched on and off when in use, and usually off at 20-21 UTC. In addition there is a local noise source that appear around Maghrib prayer time which is due just after sunset. This week that is 14:43 UTC. So LP on 40m to US west coast is difficult. Neither is it possible for us to operate on any band at this time due to high noise level. That means we can not be on 15 or 20m to US at our evening time, nor low bands to EU or VK/n the evening. We start TX as soon as noise disappear.

Another thing is the high level event in the country wich has imposed restrictions on our ability to move around, and hence has prevented us from doing the final installation of our RX antenna system outside the hotel. For our own safety we have been advised to remain at our hotel. However, this event is soon over and we will most likely be allowed to continue our installation either tomorrow tuesday or wednesday. Doing this installation means having armed body guards around while installing the RX system. Hopefully will a proper RX antenna system reduce the noise level such that we can operate on low bands even during the evenings. We will know this after the event is over and we have installed the RX antenna. Our current RX antenna picks up too much noise.

A third thing is the propagation that is not in our favour. We don't see the expected openings to neither Asia nor NA, which again leads us to working EU while we expected to work Asia or NA.

As such there are several things that affect our operation which is out of our control, however we hope that this can be resolved the coming days such that we also can start operating on 80 and possibly 160 meter.

We will discuss our ideas tomorrow with the Ministry how to proceed, so our plan is to have the 80m and a new RX antenna up and running tomorrow. Then 160m the following days.