On Tue, 10 Feb 2015, RF Collins wrote:

Joe from Kokomo wrote in :


Joe from Kokomo wrote in news:mb57kj$gld$2@dont-
email.me:

In the ham world (and the SWL world), Navassa Island was in the top
3
of
rare locations. They have not been on for decades but recently
received
permission from the govt agency that controls the island to run a
DXpedition. They are on the air as we speak -- and won't be given
permission to do it again for ten years.

Presumably they will honor SWL QSL requests.

To see what bands and modes they are currently on, go to the DX
spotting
site DXSummit.fi

To read about the island and the DXpedition and QSL info, go to
navassadx.com

It's a real mob scene, but I got lucky and worked them on 20 CW with
100
watts and a low dipole...

On 2/8/2015 6:32 PM, RF Collins wrote:

You mean a cluster ----.
First week was terrible for operator practice.
Never heard so many calling on the listening frequency.

Sadly this is almost always true with big DXpeditions -- calling on
the
listening frequency, the "DX police", intentional QRM, "F-bombs".
Lids,
kids and space cadets, unfortunately nothing new. :-(

Since my last post, I also worked them on 80 and 160 CW.

73...

P.S. It is claimed that Navassa is the *second* most wanted DX entity
--
after North Korea.


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Navassa does not seem like much of a challenge. I like listening for the
DX stations calling when the operator calls for Asia and Pacific.

But that wsa never the issue.

There are some people who have worked all the countries that can be
worked. Since the rules for DXCC make territories of a country far enough
from that country to be a separate "country", one can run up a larger
total by sending people to these obscure spots on the planet.

And since some have done it, that makes such locations valuable in the
future. There were some famous DXpeditions in the late fifties and early
sixties where some people travelled significantly to put these "countries"
on the air, not just spots like this but also countries where hams were
virtually non-existent. So that ran up the total, and if nobody returns
to such places, current hams could never reach that total.

Navassa is "rare" because nobody lives there on a regular basis, and
visiting it is terribly controlled. It's difficult to access (or was in
the past, I don't know if that's changed, docking was hard), and there are
rules in place. So it becomes valuable in that way, if you don't try for
it now, it will be a long time before you have that chance. IN itself it
means nothing, but if you've got 113 countries (for example) and your
neighbor has 113 but gets a contact on Navassa, then you will have
problems catching up with your neighbor.

The same applies to some geological formations that are just too way out
of the way. So places down around antarctica, they likely aren't going to
get on the air much, because nobody lives there. But they exist on the
ARRL "country list" and hams have visited in the past.

Having a satellite contact was once a Big Thing. Before OSCAR 6, the ham
satellites had life limited to weeks, the first one or two were only
beacons, and at least one ended up in the wrong orbit, meaning it had
little or not access time. OSCAR 6, in the fall of 1972, lasted much
longer, and suddenly a lot more people got satellite contacts. 42 years
later, and so many more satellites, it's a relatively common thing.

Michael