Dan, K8RF

VK9LX is a permanent callsign issued to Nick VK2ICV (Ex: YU7XX,YU7QDT; Op- YU1EXY,4N7A) for Lord Howe Island operations. Nick was joined by Dan K8RF (Ex: WT8N,VP5/K8RF-WT8N,160 op-VP5VW) to put Lord Howe on the air starting on November 23, 1997 through the CQ WW CW DX contest.

Both of us wanted to put a special effort towards "Topband" 160 meters, as well as 80 and 40 meters. Special effort was put into good antennas for both transmit and receive on 160 and 80 meters. The "Battlecreek Special" was used for 160/80/40 meters, with beverage receiving antennas for EU and USA.Over 550 QSOs on 160 were made under very noisey conditions to all points of the globe. See Topband Results for breakdown on 160 contacts made.

EQUIPMENT consisted of two Kenwood TS-930's, a pair of laptop computers for logging/keying and a Dentron Amplifier.
ANTENNAS for 160, 80 and 40 meters the famous "Battlecreek Special" was used for transmitting, loaned to us by W8UVZ, W0CD and K8GG. To aid in receiving two Beverages were run, one 300 meters long towards Europe and a second 100 meters long towards the US. These were simple unterminated Beverages, but they made a night and day difference in the QRN, without them the noise was 59 plus 20 DB minimum.160 would have been almost a washout if not for those two wires. Unfortunately the Beverage towards EU was "accidentaly" installed across the neighbors property, and after induring RFI problems on their telephone for several days they finally asked that we remove the EU Beverage.
For 10/15/20 meters a Cushcraft A3SDX tribander (Thanks VK4FW and the ODXG) was used, mounted on top a 12 meter long mast. A 40 meter delta loop was also put up.
VK9LX hit the air at 0727 GMT November 23rd. answering G4BWP's CQ (couldn't resist - big signal!) The first two hours brought 180 QSOs on 40 CW and 317 on 20 SSB, the pileups had to be heard to be believed! After the pileups thinned out a little things got more managable and the QSO rates got better, hitting as high as 146 per hour on CW and peaking 250 on SSB. By the end of the week 13,200 QSO were in the logbook, with over 4,400 in the CQ WW CW contest and a score of 5.6 Million points as a Multi-Single entry.