In August 2016, RAC Ontario South Director, Phil McBride, VA3QR/VA3KPJ, was part of a team of 11 operators who embarked on a DXpedition to St. Paul Island (IOTA NA-094). Phil is currently a member of a team of eight operators for a return to St. Paul Island from July 31 to August 8.
Phil will be providing regular updates here on the RAC website and on social media via our Twitter and Facebook accounts. All images are used with his permission. You can find out more about Phil and follow his journey via his blog and Twitter account and also on the CY9C St Paul Island DXpedition website.
CY9C II – Day 8 (Last Full Day)
Good afternoon from CY9C. It’s our last full day of HF operations so we’re shaking every last contact from the bands that we can. As I type this, we’re about to break 25,000 QSOs!
We’ve worked 10, 15 and 20 during daylight so far, and Pat, N2IEN, had a great run on 40 CW this morning. Right now, three stations are running FT8 on 10, 15 and 20 at really good rates – I can barely keep up with the pileup on 20.
We’ll go back to phone and CW when this run peters out. I’m hoping to make another go of 80 phone tonight – the static crashes caused by all the storm activity in the northeast were at S9+5. I’m still shocked that we’ve had runs on 10 and 12 on this trip, especially since the K level three days ago was 8!
We’re going to try for some more satellite passes before we leave tomorrow. I know no one owns the birds, but we’re limited in power and antennas here and would appreciate the indulgence of the AMSAT community in letting us in to give FN97 to as many people as we possibly can before we shut down that station this evening.
Lee, WW2DX, has completed his operations and has torn down most of his gear for transport back to the mainland today. AMSAT will remain until tomorrow, along with our HF stations. The 20m monobander will be the last antenna to come down, and we’ll leave one station running as long as possible tomorrow.
Once we shut down, we’ll resync all four computers to ensure the log is complete, immediately dump it to ClubLog and turn on the OQRS service. Processes to log changes will be posted to the CY9C Website after we get home, get some rest and figure out what to do.
This will be my last blog post from St. Paul Island. While I will keep tweeting, when next I post here, Connor and I will be in our hotel room on Cape Breton Island, enjoying hot showers and having a well deserved celebratory dinner before we embark on our drive home Friday morning.
Keep trying to work us – we’ll be here all night!
– 73, Phil McBride, VA3QR/CY9
Return to St Paul Island: CY9C II – News posts
- Official announcement
- July 30: En route to St Paul
- Day 1 – July 31: In transit and from St Paul Island
- Day 2 – Another beautiful day on St. Paul Island
- Day 3 – So what a busy day it’s been.
- Day 4 – A beautiful Saturday on St. Paul Island
- Day 5 – Good evening from the Graveyard of the Gulf
- Day 6 – The HF gods giveth, and the HF gods taketh away…
- Day 7 – Another great day on the island…
