AU2K - Kanika

[4L5A]

AU2K Kanika Island. Cezar Trifu, VE3LYC, VU3LPL will be active as AU2K from Kanika Island, IOTA AS - 179, India, 2 - 7 December 2024.
He will operate on HF Bands.
QSL via home call.

[4L5A]

Cezar will travel to the Toronto Airport by bus, in the afternoon of Nov 24, and overnight at one of the airport hotels. He will fly to India in the morning of Nov 25, first to New Delhi, then to the city of destination, where is scheduled to arrive in the evening of Nov 26 and meet with Sarath. The two will go over the list of components and logistical plans. Adersh and Anil will arrive a couple of days later, and together, the team will check all equipment and camping materials, making final purchases in Bhubaneswar, before heading out to Dhamara. Final logistical preparations will be carried out on Dec 1, and landing on Kanika Island is scheduled for the morning of Dec 2.

The team will operate from Kanika between Dec 2 and 7. After leaving Kanika, the team will pack all components that are not needed for Sagar, ship them to Guntur, and overnight in Dhamara. Next day the operators will travel to Kolkata, and then to Sagar Island. We decided that we will overnight on Dec 9 at one of the local hotels / guest houses, and depending on the level of electrical noise either continue from there or move to another island location. The operation from Sagar will end on Dec 13.

[4L5A]

Team members arrived in Dhamara yesterday, early afternoon local time.

The original plan was to carry out final preparations and depart to the island tomorrow, early morning local time, in order to arrive there at high tide. There is no pier on the island, and the only time to land is at high tide, as making our way through the mud at other times would be impossible. We tried to arrange for going to the island one day earlier, but after a lot of discussion, the conclusion was that it won’t be possible due to conflicting schedules of those helping us out.

As such, we will build and test a small 6m 3-el yagi antenna today, preparing it for a possible 6m activity. Everything else is ready, and so are we. The team will use WSJT-X and operate FT8 F/H on the HF bands, and FT8 simple on 6m (50.313 MHz). We will not operate on regular HF FT8 frequencies, and will attempt to post the actual FT8 frequency before starting activity on that band.

[4L5A]

AU2K Kanika Island News 1 Dec 2024, 15:00 UTC

Propagation was good this morning (local time) on 6m, and worked lots of stations using a rather simple inverted V and 80w. We obviously have no idea if the propagation conditions on 6m will hold, but we built a 4-el yagi which will plan to install 8 m high.

As indicated in the Equipment section, we will operate one station is CW and one in SSB, with two stations in FT8, one on the HF bands and the other on 6m if the propagation conditions permit. Given the good propagation conditions we experienced today on 6m, we made a change of plans, and decided to use MSHV for FT8 on 6m, because it will allow us to run more than one stream. We had a good run today on two streams, logging stations from BY, HL, JA, VR2, etc.

[4L5A]

AU2K from Kanika Island on 14035 now.

[4L5A]

AU2K from Kanika Island on 50323 now FT8 MSHV.

[4L5A]

AU2K from Kanika Island on 21080 now FT8.

[4L5A]

AU2K from Kanika Island, India on 14010 now.

[4L5A]

AU2K Kanika Island News
5 Dec 2024, 18:00 UTC

We kept logging contacts today, aiming to increase their number in SSB. Unfortunately, we were defeated by the lack of good high-power BPS filters. Despite various changes in equipment, the results were such them we regretfully couldn't operate more than one station in SSB at one time. Needless to say, we ended up spending a lot of time on this. In any case, the tests determined without a doubt that the RM Italy amplifier was splattering badly, and so we eliminated it.

At night, the local port, which is located a mere kilometer away or so, is lit up by a myriad of high-power halogen light and put up a significant electrical noise, which makes decoding in CW and SSB very difficult. The saving grace is the FT8, which does not appear to be affected. As such, some of us decided to take some rest for a few hours and check the situation before sunrise, leaving just one station, operating FT8 on 40m. During the day we used 400W on one station and under 300W on the other for CW and SSB, and between 150 and 200W in FT8. The legal power in VU is 400W.

We hope that all of those who wanted to log us made it at least one contact in either of the modes. However, we will continue to look for those who still need a first contact with us.

[4L5A]

AU2K from Kanika Island on 28040 now.