It has been a busy 3 days here in Tonga and we now have over 3000 contacts in the log. The station build has taken longer than anticipated. However we finally have the three stations operational since Wednesday night local time. We will be stepping up our efforts to target Europe and USA east coast from Thursday, particularly after the team gets some rest following the build.

Progress Report

So far we have seen success to Europe on 160m greyline FT8 and CW as well as to North America on their Sunrise. We are also seeing Europe at 1800z short path 20m and on 17m in the Tongan evening hours. We will look for North America on 15m during the day today as well. We have added an 80m inverted V as well in the coconut trees to see if we can get both 80 and 160m running concurrently. We will announce more openings we see over the next 24hrs.

Conditions were very good on Wednesday from 17m and below. We have yet to look at the higher bands but will start those today.

We have two remaining station bugs we will have to work around. One is that the HF is knocking out the internet (we are on a DSL line here). So we are seeing frequent dropouts (particularly on 30m where the phone line and antennas are very close together). The other is that we had a power supply failure on one of the laptops, so we are having to hot swap the power supply back and forth between station 2 and 3 when they are both running. If we vanish suddenly it could be we didnt swap it fast enough 🙂

6m Moonbounce Success

We have also been experimenting with 6m EME. The station here is small compared to the big stations in NA and EU but we are very pleased to have worked 21 stations so far with a couple more days to run. Based on what we are seeing on the lowwer bands, today might be hard for EME if the Sporadic E that was around last week manifests itself again. Will have to wait and see… A more detailed report on EME will be prepared in a day or two’s time. A huge thank you to our individual donors towards the 6m EME part of the activity too. Many of you have been successful in making contact with Tonga and claiming a 6m ATNO in the process. While we are still relative newcomers to EME, it has been great to see the support we have received. The feedback we have had has kept us going even when we were ready to give up so thank you for the positive comments,

Conclusion

The team is in good spirits and is raring to get on the air and call CQ! We hooe to get you in the log! We are indebted to our sponsors, SpiderBeam who supported us with the mast hardware we use on the 6m beam, the Hex Beam and the multi-band vertical. Also to RF Solutions (Brisbane)  and Messi and Paoloni (Italy)  who helped with the coaxial cables plus HF Radio Solutions (Renmark) for our Codan 3020 power supplies,

We must also again thank our donors EUDXF, German DX Foundation, Swiss DX Foundation , CDXC-France, CDXC-UK and RSGB. Without your support the 4-square antennas would not have made it to the island due to the transport costs.

Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who has given us an individual donation. Every amount helps and your support of our endeavours to bring Tonga to the airwaves for you is greatly appreciated.