Jan 7 saw frantic, last minute preparations. The shack turned into a battle zone with James, the five star general in command, issuing orders, answering questions and getting the last minute checks completed. The first QSO was completed with Don N1DG, one of our two USA pilots. James called a team meeting for 20 minutes and then said "Have fun guys" It was all go.

 What a blast! The ZL9CI hit the air in style with over11,000 QSOs in the first 24 hours. We opened with six stations operating on most bands to give everyone a good chance of working us. The CW operators were hot and accounted for more than half of the QSOs. We were given a taste of how bad the weather can become in an hour or so when a storm dropped the temperature and hit the antenna system with 70 knot gusts of wind late in the afternoon. The bad weather resulted in dangerous conditions to transfer the team off the island to the Braveheart and we were forced to stay ashore for the night much to the joy of 160M and 80M amateurs around the world. Trey N5KO, Declan EI6FR and Andrew GI0NWG were very popular on low band CW. 160M was brilliant all night with Trey racking up 180 QSOs. Everyone was extremely tired the next morning, The only damage sustained was that one of the 20M Yagis rotated a reflector to the vertical position.. The pileups were astonishing, with a solid wall of signals from EU, NA or JA depending on where the antennas are pointed.

 The high QSO rate produced plenty of tired grins and high fives when the logs were merged the next morning. Each day, the logs were compressed, sent by a PACTOR 2 link, (equipment provided by SCS of Germany ) to ZL2DX in New Zealand who forwarded them on for access on the QSL log server. The team made every effort to make the contacts, calls and logs highly accurate.

 Individual CW team members were working over 200 per hour on a regular basis. We put up a second 80M vertical so that we could run 40M, 80M and 160M at the same time. There were a few technical problems with co-station interference on SSB between stations. We never did resolve the problem satisfactorily which meant that 12M, 15M and 17M couldn't be run on SSB simultaneously. The CW setup hummed! Walking into the shack and looking at the CT screens hour by hour was amazing. The totals grew alarmingly. At this time, after 2 1/2 days operations we had over 20,000 QSOs in the log. One objective of this Dxpedition was to give everyone, in every country that elusive "new one" The 100W trap vertical stations seem to be able to work us as easily as the big guns. We tried to work everyone on an equal basis and enjoyed the great feedback from our pilots. We were even being worked regularly by the fanatical QRP guys.

 The pileups were beyond our wildest dreams hour after hour. The CW guys were able to work the pileups better than the SSB team. "We have DSP digital ears" they said! The SSB ops were not impressed. Europe was a priority for the Dxpedition and we were able to lay down a good signal into EU most nights. The pileups were very, very well behaved with plenty of patience and good will flowing both ways. Internet feedback from the Pilots showed we were right on the money with EU.

 Jan 13 was an excellent day. We hit 43,000 QSOs and 6,500 for the 24 hour period. We could feel the pileups getting larger day by day. They should have been diminishing. The WARC bands were huge with amateurs wanting a new one. And then on Jan 14 at 4.30 AM somebody switched off the bands. The Aurora Australis, or sunspots, or Murphy hit us. It didn't really matter what it was. The bands were dead for about 12 hours. Nothing. Not even the broadcast stations were heard. Total wipeout. And a much needed rest for the ops. We made 85 QSOs with six stations in 12 hours. Another world record. Sunspots with a vengeance!!!

 When 40M SSB was activated James ran huge totals for a few hours. 40M and 80M CW and SSB featured more in our schedule as we moved closer to our shut down planned for January 24. Our 6M beacon was heard in VK and the first 6M QSO took place with VK2DN The beacon operated continually every day listening for answers on 50.110 mHz. One evening around 6 PM, as we were leaving the shack, Lee heard a reply on the beacon. "Get Jun back here" he yelled. Jun proceeded to work over 50 JAs within an hour or so. He became an instant celebrity in Japan. The six meter beacon was monitored every day for replies. We worked ZL, VK and JA. We were never able to work the USA on that band.

 Test operations began on 80M SSB and 14 MHz RTTY which caught the DX community napping. Over 1400 RTTY QSOs took taken place on 20M and 15M. We continued to put QSOs in the log averaging around 6000 per day. 30M was an outstanding CW band, yielding thousands of QSOs from early morning until we closed down. Serious DXers need to be on 30M. We purposely left the lower bands until late in the DXpedition, with the exception of the first night when we were forced to stay overnight. That opportunity never happened again, unfortunately. Lee set up a progress chart on the wall so that we could see the daily totals. On January 21 we passed the 81,000 mark with a four days left. By this time a numbing tiredness had overtaken most of the team members. You could tell that they had had enough. As we came near the cutoff day, it became an effort to work the pileups with as much enthusiasm as they required. It was a bit like working the CQWW for weeks on end!