For the last week, there’s been three or four big pileups on 30m every evening. (It may be the same on other bands, but I pretty much stick to 30m lately). The pileups are so big and spread out that between them and the weird QRM on the band, there’s practically no room for “normal” QSOs.
Why the pileups? Well, there are two high-profile DXpeditions on the air these days. The first is the 3B9C DXpedition to Rodrigues Island. Rodrigues Island is about 400 miles east of Mauritius in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The operators are very good and they’re ripping them off one after the other. The website notes that they’ve already made more than 50,000 contacts.
The other is the HK0GU DXpedition to San Andres and Providencia Islands in the Caribbean. This is a somewhat lower profile operation, as there’s only one operator – Gerd. He’s spending four weeks on Providencia to celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary. His operation might be lower profile, but he still creates some good pileups.
I complain about the pileups, but the upside, of course, is that band conditions have been very good. If band conditions weren’t so good, then there would be fewer stations in the pileups (at least fewer stations that I can hear). There’s also a lot of DX stations on. Mostly, they’re trying to work the DXpeditions, but I’ve worked several, who I conjecture got tired of the pileups and just started looking around for other contacts.
I was, in fact, going to rant about the pileups, but Wednesday night, I was just hanging around the shack, and decided to tune around the band. I copied 3B9C, and even though there was a good-sized pileup, they were putting in a pretty good signal, so I decided to give them a call. I got them on the third or fourth try!
A little later, I was tuning around again, and happened on HK0GU calling CQ. He copied me on my first call. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. As soon as he sent 73, there was again a big pileup.
At any rate, I guess I can’t complain too much about the pileups.
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