DX notes 01 November – The Radio Amateur Society of Australia Inc.

Here is the fortnightly bulletin of DX information for Australian DXers. Solar and ionospheric news, DX observations, announcements of DX activations, operating tips, and anything else that may be of interest to DXers in our part of the world may be found here. Reader’s observations and suggestions for content are welcome.

Propagation notes

Very little is happening on the sun, and very little is happening in the geomagnetic field. Low Bands remain noisy due to almost constant thunderstorm activity.

Around the bands

Forty, thirty and twenty metres continue to offer plenty of DX, with some openings to most parts of the world, and some activity on 17 m from the Pacific area.

DX Heard or Worked

There have been several DXpeditions active over the past two weeks, including ZL7X Chatham Islands, YJ0GC Vanuatu, 5W7X and 5W2TB Samoa, VP6D Ducie Island, VK9XG Christmas Island, 8Q7PE and 8Q7YC Maldives, XT2SZZ Burkina Faso, and Z23MD Zimbabwe.

Upcoming Activations of Interest

Details of upcoming activations will be brief as there are so many. For more details of any activation listed below, visit NG3K’s excellent “Announced DX Operations” calendar https://www.ng3k.com/misc/adxo.html

Vanuatu: YJ0GC, until 4^th November.

Mayotte: FH/DJ7RJ, until 6 November.

Zimbabwe: Z23MD, 26^th October – 6^th November.

St Kitts: V47JA, until 6^th November.

Christmas Island: VK9XQ, 3^rd – 6^th and 9^th – 17^th November.

Cocos-Keeling Islands: VK9CH, 6^th – 9^th November.

Bermuda: VP9KF, until 14^th November.

Madagascar: 5R8UP, 3^rd – 13^th November.

St Lucia: J68GU, 3^rd – 25^th November.

Virgin Islands: KP2/KE4PLT and KP2/KN4PUD, 10th – 16^th November.

Maldives: 8Q7DX, 10^th – 25^th November.

Guadeloupe: TO40R, 11^th – 25^th November.

Vietnam: XV9WJR, until 27^th October.

Tanzania: 5H3MB, until 28^th November.

Bhutan: A52BH, until 5^th December.

South Shetland: DT8A, until end of December.

Maldives: 4S7KKG, until 1^st April 2019.

VP6D Ducie Island DXpedition

VP6D had to shut down a few days early due to increasingly bad weather, and left the atoll on the 2^nd of November. They finished up with around 120,000 QSO in the log. There were some problems with FT8 QSO not appearing in the online logs. The operators assure that the FT8 QSO are safe in their logs, and are in the process of compiling all logs and will soon enable the Online QSL Request Service. Pre-expedition donors will already have their QSO confirmed in Logbook of the World.

Luke VK3HJ