EP6T comments.
For all the hype about this expedition, the rhetoric about multiple antennas, rigs, a ten man team of operators and the anticipation of a great operation this one failed. On a scale of 1 to 10 and ten being the best, I must give this effort a 2 and that is being generous. From day one I had my doubts about how this operation would fare with other efforts in the past.
What resulted for the first few days were scattered contacts on 20 cw, 14.033 kHz, long time gaps between contacts, half hour, 45 minutes, one contact now and then, or when the ops could decipher some ones’s call from the large pile up. We noticed that about ten to 12 contacts were made, then the vanishing act. In between qsos, were lots of CQ’s they appeared deaf to the pile up they would vanish for an hour, return call CQ again and repeat the same process. We found this to be frustrating to say the least, we were not sure of what this operation was trying to achieve? One morning around 0800Z I copied EP6T very well on 14.033, but you guessed it, they were working Europe and only Europe there was propagation to North America at 2:00 AM local time, but no one would listen for us.
It became obvious that the propagation was not that good for several days, yet I was able to copy C5X and worked them on 10 and 15 for new band countries. I also heard a few stations in Japan, some in Asiatic Russia and a few stations from Europe. There was propagation, bad as it was, if this operation would have just shown up, they would have had lots of contacts from state side. But, this was not the case, instead no operation, or scattered contacts leaving us all frustrated.
The time clock was running, and the 26th of January the end of this operation was fast approaching. It was not until the 23rd I spied a few spots on DXscape that EP6T was on 21.283 up 5, now previous reports would send spots On DXscape, but when you got your rig to that frequency, well you guessed what happened, the vanishing act!
I arrived on frequency within ten seconds, I could copy EP6T very well on short path around s 9,they were on a beam at that time. The pile up was huge, but after a few scattered contacts and long time gap between replies the op announced they were changing antennas. The qso ratio was listed by two stations at 8/10, pretty bad ratio. Once antennas were changed the signal dropped to an s 3, yet copyable. The huge pile up vanished since many could not copy the signal at all when it was that weak.
Operator stated listening 5 to 10 up, I smelled a rat, I firmly thought that this was not EP6T, rather a pirate, or slim. I set my VFO up 5, on the second call I was acknowledged, but still did not think this was the real EP6T. I waited until the Club Log was updated, entered my call and was surprised that verification for a 15 meter SSB contact popped out on the screen. I had hopes of a cw contact on any band, or a chance at a ten meter contact, that was not to be, no chance at all, for North America.
The next day, same old scattered contacts on 20, on the final day a few scattered contacts on RTTY, looked like a valiant effort to redeem themselves of the other bands. BTW, at no time did we hear any of the ops attempt to work by call districts, what we heard was an unruly pile up about 20 khz wide!
The news was taking down antennas, folding up their tent and going home, might as well.
With ten ops, lots of gear, antennas and amps, my question is what did these guys do all day? If their objective was to operate, they did little of it. The one redeeming feature of this operation is at least a very good qsl manager is taking the chores of providing qsl cards. They go via M0URX and either direct, or OQRS, so for those of us lucky enough to tolerate the cat and mouse games we may be assured of a qsl card.
Of course logs have to be provided to the qsl manager and who knows if they will reach him any time soon? We still do not have any response from the VU4 expeditions, another one that was even worse then this one, on for five minutes a day and two contacts.
BTW, operation on 40 by EP6T was horrid, we had our collection of idiots providing nightly carriers, music, long strings of dits, obnoxious comments and self appointed band cops. It was a zoo to say the least and I gave up any chance of a contact on 40. If this expedition was spotted by the time I listened on frequency, they were gone, only thing around were the self appointed band cops shouting up, up, or making noises to disrupt any effort to work the DX. .
I certainly hope that K1N Navassa is run much better, they have two weeks to prove themselves once they get started. If they plan to operate like past expeditions mentioned then we are wasting our time. My hope is a 24/7 multband, mode operation netting over 100,000 contacts. We shall see how that works out in the first few days?
My comments are based on observations and operating habits of two recent dx expeditions. We may never see another operation from Iran for ten years or longer. This effort left much to be desired.
