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K7K expedition how did it work out for you?
2 August 2022 | by It's Tuesday early morning and I am greeting my first cup of java along with some radio time. I found myself drifting off to the weekend of radio operating. I very much enjoyed the Islands on the air contest (IOTA). It was also my plan to get K7K from Kiska island in the log as well. As the saying goes "sometimes things do not work out as planned".
I was keeping an eye on the DX clusters to see when K7K was on air and where. This year is my "year of CW" so I was looking forward to getting them in the log using CW. Again sometimes things don't work out as planned. I noticed once K7K was up and running that FT8 seemed to be their mode of choice for most of the time. I was reading on the cluster posts there were some upset ops... that very little time was spent on SSB or CW.
I am not here to rag on FT8 and to be honest, I used this mode a great deal last year and very much enjoyed it. But having said that in my humble opinion they operated FT8 about 70-80 percent of the time and left modes such as SSB and CW alone.
In the expeditions, defence conditions for them could not have been great and the Digi mode FT8 would sure fill their logs up and better than a poor showing in the log book. Also maybe the tide is shifting and with the Dx Peditions to come FT8 and other Digi modes may be the choice of the operators.
I did notice K7K on their website indicated FT8 would be used but they also included CW and SSB.
There was an occasion CW and SSB were used but on a limited basis. I will chime in and say the only long period of time they used CW was in the IOTA contest. They are indeed an island and rare as well, it was expected for them to take part BUT this seemed to be the only time K7K used CW.
I checked the clusters during the contest to see where they were. I did notice comments of frustration, K7K was operating split and some contest ops were calling on K7K calling frequency. Other comments indicated stations calling CQ contests in the responding TX frequency. Then I found they went back to FT8 in a very short time during the contest.
This is just my humble blog opinion regarding the K7K "event" but when you indicate CW, SSB and FT8 on your site giving equal time to all would be a positive thing. From what I read in the cluster comments there were more than a few unhappy campers.
10 Responses to “K7K expedition how did it work out for you?”
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Disappointing for me too, Mike. I work 20 phone on a dipole and given the conditions it was something of a long shot, but one can hope. I never heard them here and am not sure how much they were on that band. Oh well, the island isn’t going anyplace. And I appreciate that they went there at all.
Good morning Richard, it was great they went there and there were lots that got them in the log. Like you, I did not hear them at all but I was only listening on CW and did not venture over to FT8.
73
Mike
VE9KK
Hello. I thought this may be a place to get an answer. First, I am taking the test in September for my technician license. I am a CB operator and want to get into the ham world. Navy vet, electrical engineer, love radios and antenna theory. I am struggling with something. I really respect the knowledge of the amateur radio group. My struggle is understanding where the technician can operate. Google searches, YouTube searches, ARRL, Practice Tests, have yielded me the following:
1) Only HF
2) HF and some bands of VHF
3) Only 10-meters in HF
4) ARRL band plan shows more
5) HF and some bands of VFH, UHF.
Arrrgggg!!! I look at dates when I read things. This question is all over the place. Can one of you experts in here shed some light on this? Did something change? I understand the pool of questions for technician is now new as of July so maybe something changed….
Thanks for any help!!
– A future ham, Tom
Good morning Tom and very good question, I really don’t have too much of an understanding of the U.S. Amateur radio operating where and what. Let’s see if your question gets answered here but if not do I have your permission to repost your question on my blog? This way it will be a new post and grab the attention it needs. I have many U.S. readers of the blog and if I take that route I am sure your question will be answered.
First I will leave your question here for the day and see what happens and then if you’re ok with it I can do a new post just featuring your question.
Thanks
Mike
VE9KK
Absolutely! Feel free to post. Thank you!!
Good afternoon Tom, I have posted a new blog posting regarding your question and it may take up to an hour for you to see it here on the Amateur radio.com site. Below is a link to my blog (as my blog is reposted here) and you can check there for answers to your question as well.
https://ve9kk.blogspot.com/
73,
Mike
VE9KK
RE: K7K
I’m CW only so pay very little attention to FTxx and SSB modes.
I kept tracking K7K and heard them on 17m on 07/27/2022. They were running split, I called 3 times and got their attention and logged the call.
Not long after I locked my Q with them they were inundated with calls as evidenced by my panadapter and the calls reaching out.
I’m guessing I was fortunate to snare them near the beginning of that run.
WHEW !!
Good afternoon Nolan very nice to hear from you, yes I am like you I too am CW only. My issue here is I saw them on the WARC bands operating CW but I have the Hustler 4BTV. I don’t have the WARC bands so I was looking for them on 10,15,20 or 40m. The other trick was to be monitoring those bands on the cluster as well to see if and when they were on.
73 and have a nice weekend.
Mike
VE9KK.
RE: K7K
Pirate got me the first day on FT8 and I was unable to make contact again. How can this person be stopped? I am so sick of pirates!
Good morning Bill very nice to hear from you, very sorry to hear about the pirate! It’s a very sad state of affairs when someone gets a kick out of doing something like this.
73,
Mike
VE9KK