April 28, 2019
Many of you know Karl VE7ZDL from his antenna raising parties last year, NORAC club meetings, Field Day and Canada Day contest events.
Karl recently sent me an email update outlining what he's been up to. I thought it would be nice to re-post it here:
Five years ago I visited an old colleague who built his dream house in Japanese Wabi Sabi style on the island of Vieques and I brought my IC7000 with me to operate.
Last week I visited Vieques Island again (it is located between Puerto Rico and St. Croix) because the International IOTA organization gave Vieques a new IOTA designator NA249.
This time I brought my Elecraft KX2 miniature transceiver and the Italian SPE Expert 1.3K-FA linear amp. This amp is the smallest and lightest fully automatic amp and easy to drive to over a KW from the 10W max RF output from the KX2.
I also brought a number of dipoles/inverted vees and a British 7000hds fiberglass pole from SOTA Beams that compacts to 23 inches and fits in my suitcase.
Worked hundreds of stations with pile-ups in SSB, CW and a few dozen in FT8. Missed Australia and Antarctic but got all other continents.
Vieques was used for 60 years by the US Navy as a bombing practice and thus is still looking like the Caribbean in the 1950s. About a quarter of the island is still not accessible due to unexploded ordinance but the rest is a paradise. There are more sandy beaches than visitors. Hundreds of feral horses, brought over by the Spaniards in the 1600s, roam the island.
To get there you fly to San Juan in Puerto Rico and take a short flight to Vieques.
Being a US Territory I had to use my US call sign N1DL/KP4.
It was great fun and a good test for portable operations with light but powerful equipment.
See you all in VE7 soon!
73 Karl VE7ZDL
Karl will be joining us for Field Day again this year (first operator on the schedule)... and I look forward to chatting him up more about his DXpedition/IOTA experiences when he's back in Vernon.
Thanks for the update Karl,
Mike VE7KPZ
NORAC Vice-President 2017-2019, technical committee member and Field Day 2019 coordinator