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Author Topic: Bouvet 3Y0J  (Read 1775 times)

KB8GAE

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Bouvet 3Y0J
« on: February 23, 2023, 06:55:15 AM »

Otis NP4G will  be live from the Marama at 11:30am est. on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/events/6071598159569941/?ref=newsfeed

73 Rich KB8GAE
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N5PG

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2023, 11:59:50 AM »

Also try youtube via DXEngineering : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVV7xHcLU1s
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N0UN

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2023, 02:59:13 PM »

For me, it's hard to watch K3LR's video(s) when he rarely looks at the camera, seems to always be fumbling around and is picking his ear.  All in the first minute.

Got to do better than that if you want to keep this viewers attention.  I'll pass.

NØUN
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VE3VEE

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2023, 04:14:35 PM »

Wayne, I thought he was looking at his laptop, looking at the Skype connection and also reading the many comments people were posting while the show was going on.

Marvin VE3VEE
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N0UN

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2023, 08:50:20 PM »

Wayne, I thought he was looking at his laptop, looking at the Skype connection and also reading the many comments people were posting while the show was going on.

Marvin VE3VEE

Marvin,

Try as I may, I just can't get past the first minute on most of his videos.

Maybe that's why we're Hams - no video required.

Like I used to say in broadcasting, "he has a face for radio" hahahaha.

NØUN
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VE3VEE

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #5 on: February 23, 2023, 09:02:14 PM »

Wayne, I wouldn't know. I spent most of the time looking at the happy fellow on the right side of the screen.  ;D ;D ;D

Marvin VE3VEE
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N0UN

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2023, 06:15:18 PM »

They are hours out from "land legs".

After activating a rare DX Entity and a month at sea, I wonder what their next few days/weeks/months will be like.

Probably start with kissing the ground me thinks.

I can only speak for me - but I'd like to thank these gentlemen for their time and effort. After watching several of their videos, THIS DXpedition has the wildest DXpedition video I've ever seen - bar none!  It's almost unbelievable that they found a way to activate Bouvet for the Ham radio Community at all, let alone make 19,000 Q's.

NØUN

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VE3VEE

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #7 on: February 25, 2023, 05:57:24 AM »



Marvin VE3VEE
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N1UR

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #8 on: February 25, 2023, 06:19:01 AM »

I am not disparaging the resolve of the team to get on the island no matter what and make Qs, that was truly amazing and I commend them for it.

However, take a look at the videos posted near the end of the operation and look at the seas.  They are calmer than you would ever expect to plan on for Bouvet.  Any reasonable Zodiac could have made landings.  But at that point, they were snookered.

I think a few lessons have been learned with different approaches to Bouvet:
- The trade of a sailboat cost for lack of infrastructure is a fools errand.  It just doesn't work.
- The Zodiacs have to be robust to not be dangerous, damaged, and to provide enough windows of operation to succeed.  And if your boat is making you compromise on Zodiacs, its telling you the mission is doomed from the start.
- Modularize down to 50 lb weight limits - gens, gas, radios, antennas, infrastructure. Build big from modules you can get ashore and accept that ultimate limit.  Then you always have all options available. 
- Only have one fuel for all your modules.
- If you are going to use a chopper, make sure the pilot is a ham on the DXpedition or a grizzly vet (literally) that is not fazed by a bit of bouncing around or low ceilings.  Otherwise you are just paying some primadona pilot for a vacation and no output.
- If you haven't left before Christmas its probably already too late.
- Have LOTS of time to hang offshore waiting for the right weather window.  It will come but you have to have the time to wait for it or you risk disaster.

There is probably others but this is the list jumping out at me.

Not sure if we will ever see another Bouvet attempt in the big DXpedition sense. But if we do, and the above is ignored, I don;t have grand hopes for it.

Ed  N1UR
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W2IRT

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #9 on: February 25, 2023, 09:02:22 AM »

I don't disagree, however Bouvet is where Murphy lives, and his friend Darwin is close by, carrying his Evolver. For as well as anybody can plan, Murphy will find new ways to mess things up. Short of bringing the unlimited taxpayer-funded gear, experience, and the highly-trained and physically-fit bodies of a Marine Corps expeditionary force there will always have to be compromises and those are the details in which the Bouvet devil lies.

Glad to see the team has reached terra firma, and I wish them all swift and uneventful trips back to their homes and loved ones.
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Night gathers and now my watch begins. It shall not end until I reach Top of the Honor Roll

Great times are at hand, and soon there will be DX for all—although more for some than for others.

WB3BEL

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #10 on: February 25, 2023, 09:14:44 AM »

Congratulations to the 3Y0J team for a job well done.  I think this was a huge success, and you should not listen to all the experts on the forums and social media who were not actually there.

I can think of one or two minor things that I think would make a difference, but I am sure the team knows these and others that they experienced first hand, so I will keep my thoughts to myself.

The team made many amateurs happy with two way radio contacts from a rare and dangerous place.

However, I do have a very harsh comment about why more QSOs were not made.

This criticism is not due to any shortcoming of the DXpeditioners.

Rather, the amateur community has allowed miscreants of all sorts to spoil the DXing game.
Intentional interference.  Bad operators.  People who don't understand their automation.  People who don't know how to use split.  People who feel they need to give instructions on the DX frequency.  And many more.
The QSO rate was 1/2 or maybe 1/4 of what it could have been without all the poor operating skills of the DX chasers and riff raff.

This team made ~20K contacts with amateurs worldwide.  Imagine how many more operators would have successfully contacted the DXpedition if 2 or 3 or 4X the number of QSOs were made with DXing community acting more like skilled operators.

Let's clean up our act people.

You might say they needed better antennas or amplifiers or more operators, and I say rubbish!

Great job 3Y0J, and hope you get some R&R and the praise you deserve for a difficult adventure.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2023, 09:16:48 AM by WB3BEL »
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W2IRT

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #11 on: February 25, 2023, 09:29:53 AM »

...the amateur community hasn't allowed miscreants of all sorts to spoil the DXing game.
Intentional interference.  Bad operators.  People who don't understand their automation.  People who don't know how to use split.  People who feel they need to give instructions on the DX frequency.  And many more.
The amateur community hasn't "allowed" anything; there's simply no way to stop it, especially since it's a global problem, not just limited to one country's bad actors. Our FCC and Industry Canada don't police the amateur bands and I'm sure it's the same in many nations outside of North America. Identifying and "discussing the matter" with the one or two Alpha Hotels that we do catch will have no appreciable affect when 30 or more take their place. If there are no legal consequences for bad behaviour it will continue unabated.
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Night gathers and now my watch begins. It shall not end until I reach Top of the Honor Roll

Great times are at hand, and soon there will be DX for all—although more for some than for others.

WO7R

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #12 on: February 25, 2023, 09:32:58 AM »

Quote
Rather, the amateur community has allowed miscreants of all sorts to spoil the DXing game.

"Allowed"?  You write as if this is a new thing.  It assuredly is not.

We have seen jamming of FT8, which is a new thing.  The rest was depressingly normal. But even with the attempts to jam FT8, I would strongly advocate that any expedition activate FT8 F&H as the first priority.

In the extreme conditions the team found itself faced with, it elected to go CW first, no doubt as an attempt to maximize the Q rate.  Maybe the choice they made did exactly that.  The goal is maximum Q rate; discouraging the crazies is only one factor.

But their choices also encouraged 1989 levels of jamming and bad behavior.  This is why I would suggest FT8 first if the rates are remotely similar.

I have noticed that many expeditions that go FT8 first discourage the jammers with alacrity.  The jammers don't get to hear their wonderful voices making snide comments on SSB.  They don't seem to get the same kind of pleasure from dumping a "buzz" signal on top of the CW op.  And so on.  They know that their activities are not only going to fail, they are not going to get heard.  So, they don't get any on the air ego strokes (which for many/most, seems to somehow be a key factor).

On FT8, even if they do jam, people barely notice they are there.  As long as the QSOs go in the log, it is less than worthless because it goes unheard.

The way bad behavior is discouraged (the way it has always been discouraged) is for the expedition to show that no matter what the crazies do, they can put people in the log at high rates.

Once that is demonstrated, the crazies go away.  Because 3Y0J could not put up the typical strong DXpedition station, that did not happen here.  So, we got more crazy and for longer.

Even 500 watts to a two element vertical array might have made a big difference for corralling the crazies.

This is not meant as any kind of indictment of the 3Y0J team.  They were operating far outside of their plan in an unforgiving place.  They had to make, and live with, decisions in real time, not three weeks later.  They made about 19000 people happy. That's not nothing.
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K1VSK

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #13 on: February 25, 2023, 09:41:39 AM »

Congratulations to the 3Y0J team for a job well done.  I think this was a huge success, and you should not listen to all the experts on the forums and social media who were not actually there.

.

Thought that deserves repeating.

“Everything is easy for those who don’t do it” and especially the experts who (in their mind actually think they) could do it better, know which boat to use, which tender(s) to use, how to ….. 
Some here might benefit greatly by remembering the adage “It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”
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EI2GLB

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Re: Bouvet 3Y0J
« Reply #14 on: February 25, 2023, 09:46:54 AM »

The level of CW DQRM on the bands these days is crazy, it used to be you went to CW to get away from the crazies,

Anything semi rare spotted in EU lately is wiped out almost immediately with s9+ tuning and people just holding there keyers closed for minutes at a time, it's a pity there rig doesn't burst into flames in there faces  >:(
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