VP6D - Ducie Island - News - Announcements - Video

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VP6D News 30 October 2018
- The weather is cooperating, with only a few rain showers over the past
24 hours.

- We're planning our departure and station take down process. We are on schedule to meet the departure plan providing the weather continues to cooperate, however, if the forecast suggests unfavorable weather or sea conditions on Thursday and Friday, we may move up the departure date.

- On our Weds 31 Oct we remove the EME and 160 antennas and any equipment not essential for the remaining operation.

- On our Thursday 1 Nov we will take down the CW camp and all non-essential camp structures, pack all VP6D equipment, and load the CW camp onto the Braveheart.

- On our Friday we'll finish deconstructing the SSB / base camps, continue loading the boat and depart Ducie Island at 18:00 (local).

- We will unload the entire log before we leave the island, most of the
FT8 dupes will be removed during that upload.

- OQRS will be activated after the upload.

- The team appreciates the cooperation we've received from the DX community. The pilots forwarded your comments and suggestions. It's impossible to respond individually, be assured we read the summary of your comments and have acted on several of these where feasible. Thank you for the kind words; while the team is tired, reading these notes encourages them to work harder.

Team Ducie 2018

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160m antennas will be down after sunrise on Ducie.

No more 160m after another 5-6 hours.

The CW stations will start to be dismantled as soon as daylight happens on THUR November 1st (tomorrow).

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It rained most of the night, and is windy. We take down the CW camp today.
The SSB camp comes down tomorrow this time (1600z) , non essential items going back to the boat today.
VP6D Ducie Island DX Pedition Team

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VP6D Alert:
In order to achieve a safe departure from Ducie Island - at 15:37z the skipper directed us to shut down today. We are beginning that process as I type this note.
It's been raining all night, with 20+ knot winds. The ship is about 300 meters off shore, the forecast indicates continuing 20+ knot winds, 2 - 3 meter seas.
We are collecting all the logs and will send to the EU QSL management team (hopefully before we leave), they will remove FT8 dupes and refresh the server before turning on OQRS.
We want to thank everyone for their support and hope we met your expectations.
Team Ducie 2018

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VP6D Ducie Island DX Pedition Images

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VP6D Ducie Island News 7 November 2018
WOW, what an experience.

We arrived Papeete late Tuesday after an uneventful (but long) 4 hour flight from Mangareva, French Polynesia.

The team is in good spirits, we've been receiving hundreds of e-mails sent by the DX community, thank you for the positive comments.

Of course, we were disappointed to leave Ducie early, but when you see the video of our island departure we think you'll agree it was the right decision. There is no harbor at Ducie, Braveheart used different landing and extraction points based on the winds, tide and the seas. Safety is always the primary concern, and while it was not raining, changing sea conditions presented the crew with challenges to remove the team and equipment without incident.

Our log management team in Europe have all but one log that contains 523 QSOs, we will send that file in the next day or so. Internet at our hotel is not robust enough to work the logs. Many of you have sent e-mail to our personal e-mail accounts and to the VP6D.com mailbox regarding busted calls and other log problems.. Those will be read and addressed beginning this weekend, it can not be done from Tahiti.

We will spend the next 2 days relaxing and repacking our bags before the long flights home.

Thanks for the the wonderful pileups, and thanks to the Braveheart crew that made this a safe and exciting DX-pedition for the team and the DX community.

73,
Team Ducie 2018




VP6D team back safely to Mangareva (French Polynesia) — at Gambier Islands.

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Team photo before leaving Ducie Island — at Ducie Island.

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VP6D Ducie Island 2018 DX Pedition article

Introduction to Ducie Island

Ducie Island is an uninhabited atoll in the Pitcairn Island group located in the center of the southern Pacific Ocean approximately equidistant from Chile and New Zealand, both several thousand kilometers away. It lies 535 kilometers (332 mi) east of Pitcairn Island, and over 1,000 km west of Easter Island. The atoll is 2.4 km (1.5 miles) long, measured northeast to southwest, and about 1.6 km (1 mile) wide. We landed on the main island, Acadia, on the north and east side of the atoll. Acadia is crescent-shaped, several hundred meters long and mostly covered in low trees. There are also three small islets, Pandora, Westward and Edwards, on the southern side of the atoll. Due to its inaccessibility and landing permit requirements, Ducie is rarely visited today.
Amongst the Pitcairn group, Henderson Island is most famous for its birds, but Ducie is also a significant breeding ground for a number of species. More than 90% of the world population of Murphy’s petrel nests on Ducie (an estimated 250,000 birds), while pairs of red-tailed tropicbirds and fairy terns make around 1% of the world population for each species.

Ducie was first discovered in 1606 by Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, who named it Luna Puesta, and rediscovered by Edward Edwards, captain of HMS Pandora, who was sent in 1790 to capture the mutineers of HMS Bounty (although they did not find the mutineers on nearby Pitcairn). Edwards named the island Ducie in honor of Francis Reynolds-Moreton, 3rd Baron Ducie, under whom he had previously served. In 1867 it was claimed by the United States under the Guano Islands Act, but the United Kingdom annexed it on 19 December 1902 as part of the Pitcairn Islands.

Ducie became a DXCC entity on November 16, 2001, after the Pitcairn Island Amateur Radio Association (PIARA) was accepted as an International Amateur Radio Union member-society. The first expedition was led by Kan, JA1BK in March 2002 using the VP6DI call sign. One year later, Ducie was again on the air with VP6DIA. Ducie was last activated in Feb 2008 as VP6DX by an international team of 13 operators, who made over 180,000 contacts in 16 days of operation. However, after 10 years of no amateur radio activity, Ducie had been climbing up the most-wanted lists and was ranked as ClubLog’s #19 before VP6D’s activation.

http://wp.cdxc.org/infos/cr/vp6d-com...-a-lile-ducie/

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Having returned home in time for the US Thanksgiving holiday, and now with Christmas already here, we are busily working on the year end project close activities.
The Braveheart returned to New Zealand on Dec 18th, our equipment was moved to the warehouse on Dec. 19th. The customs broker will collect the shipment after the holidays for return to San Francisco.
We are designing the QSL card and expect to have it to the printer in the next few weeks. The cards will be printed in, and mailed from, Europe. You can expect to see them sometime in February. Of course, buro cards will take longer to arrive. We will notify the DX bulletins when the Direct Mail cards are posted.
Happy Holidays from the VP6D team

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The VP6D QSL card designs were completed, proofs were submitted and approved for printing.

Gennady UX5UO printed the cards during the week of Jan 7th, they will be shipped to Tim M0URX in the UK during the week of Jan 14th. A separate /MM card was also designed.

Tim has already prepared the mailing labels, the envelopes are waiting to receive your cards. All confirmation requests received up to the mailing date will be included in the mailing. Confirmation requests after the first mailing will be processed on a regular basis.

We expect to place the cards in the mail system by early February. The cards will be mailed from the United Kingdom, so please allow for mail system delays before asking for the status of your card(s). Buro cards will be mailed to the world buros quarterly, expect 6 - 12 months, or more, to receive buro cards.

If you already requested confirmation via OQRS or by direct mail, our system will not allow duplicate requests. For example requesting a buro card more than once, or requesting a buro card if a card was sent via Direct Mail.

We will send another update when the cards are placed into the mail system.

73,
VP6D QSL Team