KH8/SM7PKK

Before I even came home from my first trip to pacific I had decided that I must get back to pacific again to do some more traveling. This time the target had moved though. Now the main purpose was to be active on the amateur radio bands and to optimize the QSO´s more than sight seeing. At least in the places I had seen before. My first stop was KH8. I was going to revenge myself for my bad result in CQWW 1988 when I assembled 560 QSO´s. Murphy had decided otherwise though and while I ended up in KH8 my luggage ended up in New Zealand. I was though determined to succeed and managed to get in touch with AH8C Mr. Kim who was willing to let me use his station in the shape it was.

Well there was only 24 hours to the contest so not much could be done. He had a 5 element tribander and a broken down 40M beam. The 40m being useless I was confined to 20,15 and 10M for the contest. I got tremendous pileups with the big antenna and the Alpha76 i had at my disposal and could not stay on 20m for long working EU. The pileup was so big that no stations could be picked out for about 5 minutes. So I QSy´d to 10M and found even more europeans. After about 3400 QSO´s I had to run out and get more logging papers as they had ran out. I couldn´t believe how many QSO´s could be made. My final result came to 4700 QSO´s with a score of 3,262,192 Points my biggest ever in CQWW. The score should Of course have been much higher but being only on 3 bands very much limited the amount of multipliers.
It took two weeks to go through the handwritten logs to check the score and dupes in there .

5W1HK

After the fun I had in the SSB contest I thought I should give it a try in the CW portion as well this time in Western Samoa. I had better preparation for the antenna work and was able to get on all bands this time. Again the propagation was very good so I managed 3600 QSO´s in the contest and was starting the work of checking the logs. I flew on to Fiji almost immediately after the contest and on arrival in Fiji I found out that the ship was due to leave for Rotuma within two days! This meant that I never had any time to send in the logs and thus my effort was never seen in the results.

3D2XR in action.

It took almost 2 days of transport with the local ferryboat with people getting seasick all over all the time. It was coming towards X-mas and people where returning for the holidays. I had been able to get in touch with a family with whom I had arranged to stay for 6 weeks while on the island. I was able to make about 8300 QSO´s during this time while at the same time explore the island and the life on it. This was a totally different place than anything I had visited before. They had no electricity in the village (except for running one video-machine) the stay was most pleasant until I caught a flu that people on a ferryboat had brought on the next trip. The flu in combination with eating only local food made me very sick and I lost about 10 kilos during this stay. So it was difficult to be QRV and to concentrate on working everyone while being so ill as I was.

FW/SM7PKK

I stayed in Suva, capital of Fiji for a week arranging for my next stop FW Wallis island and trying to gain some weight again. Then flew of to Wallis. This was the first real stop on a French speaking island. Which made it more difficult. what made it even more difficult was the fact that the only bank in the place had gone bankrupt. So for two weeks in Wallis I spent more money than 6 weeks on any other island would cost. I got QRV and made about 8900 QSO´s which was quite easy. Due to that very limited amount of people who spoke English the distractions where minimized. The island was very nice though and as other french islands It smelled a lot from the many Tiare trees that can be found. While I was starting to pack down my gear the weather had changed drastically. What I didn´t know then was that a full scale hurricane was going to arrive 6 hours after my departure! Arriving in Fiji again I found out about the hurricane that was named “OFA”. This hurricane had damaged Wallis and was continuing down to Tokelau´s, Samoa, Niue and Tonga. I stayed in Fiji for a week and then continued on to 5W1/KH8 to arrange for the boat to Conway for 3D2AM.

5W1HK KH8/SM7PKK in disaster area

All the Samoan Islands had been devastated by the hurricane and all the beauty of the island I had seen before was gone. Left was a brown looking mess compiled of broken trees,houses and other debree. I got in touch with Kiyoko and was invited to stay in her place, which I did.I got in touch with the people on Galatea and together with OH2BH we chartered the Yacht for a trip to Conway Reef. Martti had invited me to join this major DX-pedition which I Of course was thrilled about. Being only 22 years old who could have guessed that would happen! I continued to do some operating and took part in the ARRL SSB contest from 5W1HK at some friends house. After all the preparations concerning the Yacht was done I was going to finish of my own DX-pedition tour by trying to make achieve my target of 50.000 QSO´s set before the pacific tour. This meant that I had one more place to visit and 10.000 QSO´s to make before it was complete. The place to activate was ZK2 Niue.

ZK2KK and ZK2KY from Niue.

Kiyoko 5W1HM/NH6RT decided to join me going there for a two week stay. She wanted me to let her do all the building of the station so she could learn how to do it (with me as help if needed) before she went on with her plans to explore the pacific with radio. We both did well and had totally managed 18.500 QSO´s. Kiyoko had been determined to make just as many QSO´s as me to show that she could to. She was a bit disappointed when she “only” reached 8000.
Niue as an island is very strange. There are barely any people left since most of the people moved to New Zealand a few years back. Leaving several villages as ghost towns. The island is a high island not like the atolls I had visited before. After this operation I continued to KH8 and 3D2 to help out with the Conway Reef DX-pedition in 1990.

Sponsors and supporters:

I wish to acknowledge the contributions and assistance of those who helped ensure the success of this operation, including:
NAVAL Electronics AB, Swedish Radio Supply, the members of SK7CE, N6IC, ZK2KY, , 3D2ER, 3D2JO, AH8C.

Equipment:

This tour was a real Backpacker tour with the slight difference that in my backpack I had more radio equipment than anything else. I cut my GPA-40 (4-band vertical) into 68 cm long pieces and could then fit it into the Backpack. This together with all cables and accessories came to about 15 kilos. Then packed the radio in the original box together with more items. All together I had about 20 kilos of equipment with me including the clothing. EVERY item (except clothing) brought can be seen on the ZK1XI QSL-card. Plus that I had a Tokyo Hy-power HL1K packed in a flight case that was approved as cabin baggage (this meant 25 kilos to carry that should look like 5 kilos to the check-in personnel)