There was a DXpedition to Navassa Island back in February '15 and I got them in my logbook. It tooks some doing under the circumstances.
The powers that be only allow Navassa to be put on the air about once every 20 years. I's some kind of a preserve and nobody's officially allowed on it. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it's not just another entity like France or Canada that will be there and can be QSO'd by a ham anytime they find propagation.
I knew it was going to be mobbed and that I would play hell getting them in my logbook for any number of reasons. For one thing the only transceiver I had at my disposal at the time was my PRC320 because I was out of town. I would also have limited time as I was working and work comes first. Ham radio is a hobby.
I managed to catch a break and ran out to the parking lot where I had things already set up. I had arrived to work early, chosen my parking spot and had already draped a wire over the nearest tree for use as an antenna.
I had already charged the battery with the hand charger, spinning it for several hours. I was good for a few hours of trying to work the island.
Before I went to the pickup I did my homework. I knew I couldn't just spin the dial as there is no dial to spin on the little manpack. There's no VFO as we know it, just a row of 'decade switches' to change frequency with. The '320 is primitive by ham standards. It's a simple rig designed to be able to be taught to people of little or no education to be used in a single class. It's simple.
I went straight to the DX clusters on line and made a few notes. They were currently working the 20 and 40 meter bands. A glance outside told me to try 20 meters. They were also 'working split'. This means they were transmitting on one frequency and listening on another.
When a good operator wants to handle a large volume of traffic he often 'works split'. It creates a smooth flow and eliminates a lot of the chaos created by a big pileup. He will generally end each QSO with 'listening 5 up' to let people know it's a split so they don't walk on top of him.
These guys were listening 5-10 up! This means they were spreading their pileup over a wider aarea on the band. WHen I saw that I knew the pileup was massive!
I went out to the pickup and set up the rig and carefully tuned the antenna to the 20 meter frequency and tuned to where the target was transmitting. While he wasn't a perfect 5x9, he was clear enough to read easily. This was the easy part. I had him located and could hear him. Next I cruised through the pileup frequencies and listened. It was a mob scene and I know an awful lot of the Big Guns were running at least 1.5 kilowatts. I was running a measly 30 watts.
I paid careful attention to the '10 up' pileup. It was bad, a real mob scene but not quite as bad as it was at '5 up'. Transmitting 10 up meant it would be a lot easier for me because I only had to click one decade switch one single click.
I would go one click up to transmit and one click down to receive and maybe...just maybe the operator would find me in a sea of chaos.
Anyway, I transmitted my call into the pileup, clicked the switch to be treated to hearing someone else's all sign. I have figured this would happen a lot and I had planned on this taking a lot of time and effort. I knew if he was a good operator he would take a call or two from the 5 up, another couple of calls from those 6 up and so on until he got a couple of calls from the 10 up and then start over again. The odds were 4 out of 5 I was simply transmitting into dead air.
I was persistent and kept at it. It was cold and my fingers got stiff. The knobs of the decade switches were sharp because the radio was designed to be used by people with greasy and muddy hands. After a while my fingers outright hurt.
I must have easily made well over a hundred tries until I heard the operator say, "Ending XXX" This was the last three letters of my call sign. I clicked back and repeated my call sign slowly in the phonetic alphabet and was rewarded with him repeat the entire call sign to me perfectly followed by the usual 5-9 apply anywhere signal report.
I clicked down quickly and simply answered "You are 5-9, out!"
Then I carefully logged the date, time and frequency on a piece of paper and packed up. Now I had to make sure I was in the log. Back to work I went and went straight to the computer.
I sent myself an email that read, "K1N 1428Z 5 Feb15 20Meters 5x9 Navassa". I would enter this in my paper logbook when I got to it. I later did and there is it if anyone wants to see it.
Later that evening I went on line again and went to the DXpedition's website and checked their on line logbook. There I found my call sign. I was 'in the log' and had something to brag about.
Then I went to their QSL service and ordered my QSL card. It showed up a couple of months later.
I'm proud as a peacock of that card. It took a DXpedition operator some pretty good ears to head my little backpack rig in the middle of a king hell pileup and it had cost me the better part of a morning and into the afternoon and bleeding fingers to get it done.
I'm not a flashy operator. I don't have a very powerful station but I am persistent and I can get things done.
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