The SFDXA was proud to sponsor the 2015 CQ DX Marathon plaque for Oceania.
The DX Marathon is the perfect answer for the DX-er who needs that extra incentive to get on the air every day! Simply work as many countries and CQ Zones as you can in each calendar year, regardless of the band or mode. Each country and zone counts only once, so you can concentrate on working new ones rather than working the same ones on multiple bands and modes. Many awards are given for the top overall scores in four classes plus top scores in modes, bands, US call areas and more! More information about the CQ DX Marathon can be found here.
2015’s top score for Oceania, was ZL2IFB; here are his comments:
Thank you all so much for sponsoring the 2015 CQ DX Marathon plaque for Oceania. It’s a nice way to celebrate a successful year’s DXing. The plaque is very smart, really classy, and I’m proud to display it in my shack – in my eye-line on the wall behind the radios in fact, inspiring me to have another go in the 2016 event.
I have some help this year …
I’m standing beside a rack of antenna bits, holding “Bramble”, a lamb born just a few days ago at the weekend. She slipped through the fence and promptly got caught in the brambles. The ewe wandered off with her other lamb, unfazed, but luckily Deborah (my better half) heard her calls and rescued her, so now we are bottle feeding her. It’s a good thing I work from home! Perhaps I can train her to bleat at me when a new one appears on the cluster.
DXing is fascinating from the South Pacific. I guess up there in Florida you have a few thousand active hams within ground wave and first skip range. Down here in New Zealand there are only about 50 of us truly active on HF, plus a few hundred more in Australia, Indonesia and Hawaii, but with a few notable exceptions hardly any others across the huge expanse of the Pacific Ocean. From space, the world looks very blue and wet in our hemisphere …
We live on a hilltop clearing in a forest block about 15 miles inland from the East coast of North Island NZ port of Napier. We can see the sea from up here, which is a clue about the excellent takeoff. With no neighbours for a mile or more, I have only myself to blame for the few odd computer sproggies I hear. It’s a joy to be able to hear very weak DX, and a good thing too given just how far away most of it is!
If any of your members want to contact New Zealand or have a chat, I’d be happy to set up skeds. My passion is CW, mostly on 20 or the lower bands these days but I have a mike and can run RTTY, PSK or even JT65 without much hassle. Please email me: Gary@g4ifb.com (yes, we emigrated from the UK in 2005).
My station is an Elecraft K3 plus amplifier, normally running about 500w to 1 kW out to long runs of coax feeding fullwave wire loops on 80 and 40m (hanging between fir trees), a wire vertical on 30m (supported on a fishing pole over the corrugated iron roof of my garage/workshop), a 2 element Yagi for 20+15+10m, a 3 element monobander for 17m (on loan from a friend in town) and a lash-up rotatable wire loop for 12m. I’m currently building a 2 element HF quad, VERY slowly. With any luck it will be in the air before the sunspots return but I wouldn’t bet on it.
OK, that’s it from me. Thanks again guys for the plaque, much appreciated. If you ever find yourselves down in my part of the world, please get in touch and call in. Feed the lamb or work the DX, it’s your choice. On second thoughts, you can do both!
73 CUL Gary ZL2iFB www.G4iFB.com
PS John K9EL who runs the Marathon is a star too – very friendly, very keen to help, a credit to the hobby.