Received an email about the Bouvet Island DXpedition in February 2026 from Rick Williams VE7TK. Here’s the Bouvet link.
He writes, “If I am fortunate enough to work them, that will be my #340 of the total of 340!! So here’s hoping!!”
Note Rick’s photo below. And he’s not going to Bouvet. He really, really wants this DX contact, though.
Good luck, Rick.
Like many other IHF members, I live in a condo, thereby limiting my ability to erect large antenna arrays. I live on the top floor of the building, and have managed to install a low-visibility short (14 foot) non-resonant vertical on the building’s roof, with a few radials spread out on the flat surface. I have an AH-730 automatic antenna tuner located at the base of the vertical, and run the cables down to my shack through one of the building’s air ducts. The radio is an IC-7300, putting out 100 watts. I had never entered a contest before 2024, and assumed that my “little pistol” station wouldn’t stand a chance against the “big gun” stations with their tall towers, stacked beams, kilowatts of power, and highly-skilled CW operators. However, when I joined IHF in early 2024, I noticed that many other club members were entering contests “just for the fun of it”, so I thought that I would give it a try. (For the whole story in Downloads, click here.)
Looking at 3830, it appears that this might have been a Canadian contest! It also looks like IHF was the dominant club!
I heard a rumour that TSN sports was carrying live coverage of the points battle between VE7ZO and VE7UF (VE7JH), but I couldn’t find the channel on my TV to verify this. While the mid-Island “Big Guns” were battling it out at the top of the leader board, us “Little Pistols” down at the bottom end of the Island were just scratching for the left-overs! Here is a report from one of the Little Pistols:
“I had high hopes for the Commonwealth Contest. RSGB had confirmed that I could use my decoding software (CWget) and still enter the Unassisted category, my FT8 DXing during the previous week had been very productive, and our Team Leader (Jim, VE7ZO) said that we should have decent Propagation on the weekend! I “tuned up” my station on Friday’s SST contest, “tweaked” the N1MM macro file, made a keyboard template for my computer, polished up my key, waxed the antenna, and purchased some Guinness non-alcohol beer ….. I was ready!
I had planned on entering the 12 hour, Low Power, All Band, Unassisted category. I fired up everything at 8:30 am on Saturday morning, and immediately heard a number of UK stations on 15 and 20 metres. Unfortunately, there was a strong “flutter” and “echo”, which made for very rough copy. CWget was having a hard time (especially with serial numbers), and I often had to resort to self-decoding and/or asking for lots of repeats. The UK stations faded away after an hour or so, and I expected to work other Commonwealth areas. One of the strongest signals was from ZF2CA in the Cayman Islands (I worked them on 40, 20, and 10 metres). There were surprisingly few workable VE signals. There were several other contests running, and some strong South American signals.
I use S&P most of the time, but things were so quiet that I called CQ many times to see if I could raise some action. I only had one response to my various calls, and it was an Argentinian!
I worked several HQ stations in Canada, England, and New Zealand, but otherwise didn’t have any “special” contacts.
As the day wore on, I was hoping for some decent activity from VK and ZL stations. However, I didn’t hear anyone from Australia, and only worked three ZL’s.
I paused for an afternoon nap, but things weren’t much better when I got up. I took another break for dinner, and thought that I would be able to get lots of VE’s on the lower frequencies in the evening. I heard (but couldn’t work) one G3 station on 40, and only a couple of workable VE’s. I closed down at about 8 pm, just after I noticed that 40 metres seemed to consist of nothing but VE7 stations (mostly affiliated with IHF)!
Alan (VE7UBA) lives a couple of blocks from me, and he did much better. I am telling myself that this is only because he got up 4 hours before me!
I am very embarrassed about my score, but have posted it on 3830 (with credit to IHF), and will be sending the Cabrillo file into RSGB later today.”
Roger Palmer VE7AP