[FEBRUARY 16 @ 1400Z]
Goodbye Bouvet! The anchor is up. The engine is on. Marama is sailing away from Bouvet and heading to Cape Town, South Africa.
Six 3Y0J Team members bid the island farewell on deck. The rest are below deck in their bunks preparing for what is reported to be two days of rough seas.
[FEBRUARY 15 @ 1130Z by Ken LA7GIA]
We activated Bouvet Island in extremely difficult conditions! Now that we leave Bouvet with mixed feelings, we also know that we did what we could to get Bouvet on the air.
Four members went ashore at Bouvet on 31 January in good conditions to set up the climbing route and install an unmanned zodiac rope system between a buoy and the beach, so that we could land equipment also in rough surf. During the day the surf increased, and the extraction of the team members was aborted, and we were thus stranded on Bouvet late in the evening. During 3 nights we slept outdoors under the open sky in cold and difficult conditions with little or no supplies. We prepared a simple emergency shelter on the island where we stayed (tarp). During the second day we got some supplies in a risky zodiac operation in high swell. We lost several objects in the surf and punctured the zodiac. The conditions on the beach were terrible. Due to the coming storm, we evacuated back to Marama on day 4.
Despite this, we decided to go ahead and scale down DXped. We could not fight against Bouvet, but had to adjust to the weather and go ashore when Bouvet allowed us. We called it “Picolite DXped” as pictures will show you we operated with 100W from a single tent, no chairs and no table, 60m coax, no amp, simple antennas, small generator etc. Our 2 Elecraft K3 radios were stacked on top of a bucket turned upside down, and we sat on the ground operating. All our wet clothes were dried outdoor on the rocks, and we had very limited heating. We went through a storm of 55 knots, but our tent had no problem with the windforce! The spiderpoles and the DX Engineering antennas also survived the storm w/o any issue.
We only took the equipment we needed, 620 kg in total including supplies. All our supplies to the island were via a rope attached to a buoy 100 meters from shore to beach. All objects were hooked to the line and floated to shore by team members pulling the rope. We named it the gym. The team members also went ashore in survival suits hooked to the line and floating to shore. What an experience!!
Radio Operation: Pileup was difficult as our signals were weak. We had good reception and very often we called 3 to 5 times to log a qso. Many DXers called us but couldn’t hear us, how frustrating! We focused on fewer bands to maximize ATNO and looking at the stats we achieved 19,000 QSOs and 50% unique calls. And many dupes! Many are satisfied, but some are also disappointed by the performance of either the team or the DQRMers. We had issues with the FT8 due to we did not have any device to sync against, and our clock were 14 seconds off – which meant we at some time were TX odd, while we thought it was even.
As for Bouvet, there is no guarantee at all, whether you use two helicopters or zodiac! We could have wanted to make more contacts, but safety was and will always be more important than trying to push our limits in a risky environment. In the coming months, you will be invited to hear more of our stories at conventions and in articles. (Videos below)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3093983840726129/media/videos
