Efter sisådär två års kontinuerlig drift sedan förra oplanerade driftstoppet gjorde vår server en ordentlig karatevurpa (kernel panic) under kvällen.

Eftersom den har gått oavbrutet fram tills nu sedan nya maskinen installerades förra våren tror vi att det var en enstaka händelse som aldrig kommer inträffa igen. För säkerhets skull blir det nog något mer mindre avbrott under helgen/veckan för uppgradering av diverse mjukvaror och kärnor.

* 2011-11-14 * De flesta mjukvarorna är nu uppdaterade och det kvarstår endast en serveromstart under veckan.

Idag var (är, i skrivande stund) det superconds på 144 och upp över östersjön. Bifogar utdrag och karta för 8S4S lilla station med 10el ca 10m över marken ———[ EDI Statistics generated from ”UcxLog 6.80” ]——— Call Square QSO DXCC Sqrs (x 500) + Points = Score 8S4S JP80CH 24 7 18 9000 18752 27752 Mode: CW: 13 (54%) SSB: 11 (46%) Average QSO length: 781 Km ——————— [ Top 10 QSO Points ] ——————— Date Time Call TX RX Grid Points 111110 1856 OK2POI/P 53 55 JN99 1222 111110 1810 OK2BFH 599 599 JN99 1193 111110 1741 OK2AF 579 559 JN89 1177 111110 1804 DL6NAA 59 57 JO50 1156 111110 1919 DB6NT 59 56 JO50 1144 111110 1733 OK1TEH 55 57 JO70 1136 111110 1752 DG5CST 57 57 JO60 1089 111110 2022 DD0VF 55 44 JO61 1042 111110 1914 DL3DTH 419 529 JO61 1027 111110 1953 DL4DWA 559 529 JO61 1016 111110 1956 DK7AW 559 559 JO51 1012 111110 1940 DL4OL 559 559 JO52 987 111110 1859 DL9USA 55 55 JO71 980 111110 1949 DL1RNW 519 519 JO62 918 111110 1958 DD3SP 599 599 JO72 870 111110 1955 DH8BQA 599 559 JO73 802 111110 1819 R1AX 599 559 KO59 785 ————————— [ DXCC ] —————————- OK: 4 DL: 15 UA: 1 YL: 1 ES: 1 SM: 1 SP: 1

With the permission from Thor, TF4M, his FAROS Beacon receiver has been added to our compilation. Thanks Thor! This makes an interesting view of scandinavian and northern propagation. Currently enabled beacons are:

TF4M at 65 Degrees
LA9XKA at 60 Degrees
SK6NL at 57 Degrees

Unfortunately, SM5AJV (59*) and SM7OHB (55*) beacons has been offline for quite some while.

If YOU are running a FAROS beacon and would like to be included in our list, please just drop us a mail with your FAROS-URL (info at sk6aw.net), we will appreciate it.

The compilation and information can be found at: http://www.sk6aw.net/condx

Today was even more shaky than the trip to the Market Reef. Phones where ringing and beeping (when they worked – coverage is really bad), and messages between the group on the reef, the captain of the boat and the finnish lighthouse society was exchanged. Looking around the island it was pretty hard to land anywhere. Also, there was very rought seas, so when the group supposed to arrive got half way the skipper tought it would be useless to continue and we were almost left on the reef for several more days before the weather was supposed to calm down. However, it was decided to keep going and try. There’s basically three possibilities to land on the island (all natural): At southern strong wind (or no wind, faint winds from any direction), you can land in the northern harbour. Very comfortable and close to the lighthouse. At northern winds, you have to bring a very small boat to land in ”the shit bay” on the southern side. Or, as today, when we had western winds and old sea – the entire island was hit by waves, both the northern and southern sides was impossible. At the eastern side there is a small opening where it was possible to put the front towards the cliffs and keep the engine running. This was possible but it’s 200 meters away from the other sites over uneven rocks, so we had to run over the island with all equipment while the boat and the landing site was flushed by waves. Not many were dry after unloading and loading the boat. The ride home was like a sunday pleasure ride. We went with the waves compared to the outgoing group who went against the waves and basically had a hell of a ride. The whole trip for the day was just finished. Starting at 10:00 from the Market Reef, by boat to Åland, then ferry to Grisslehamn (we had a great buffet of wild meat on the ferry by the way – I really recommend it!), then changing to the ferry bus to Uppsala, another change to the local bus towards Arlanda, finally, flight home to Gothenburg, and another bus and tram ride. Opened my front door at 20:15 just missing the first 20 minutes of the great football game between SM – PA that just ended! Last we heard from the finns, Martti and Juha unfortunatly ended up on a waiting list for the ferry from Mariehamn towards Finland, so if they were really unlucky they had to stay another night on Åland. During the week we had great support and company from Teija and Liisa from the Finnish Lighthouse Society, wich was greatly appreciated! Not a single guest visited the Market Reef during our stay, compared to last time in 2007 when it was summer and calm sea. It’s sad to leave this very magic place! I miss it already. It has quite some charm, even close to the upcoming winter with high winds, cold temperatures, ”manual” shower outside, and no supplies whatsoever from the mainland (no electric, freshwater, etc). What you bring to the island, you have. Everything else does not exist. I will get back with a real writeup and tons of pictures later on – when I have setteled into normal life again. First I have to adapt to the Swedish language again. It has only been English and very much Finnish during this week. I was the only one not speaking Finnish on the reef this time. Someone said there was almost no pictures of yours truly in the blog, and that depends on that I’ve only been using my own pictures, so this will be a slight ego-trip since we ”file shared” quite good before leaving – sharing pictures between everyone. If you haven’t read it yet, you should really read the blog of the Monk Monestary on Market Reef: http://www.qrz.com/db/OJ0X#mnk Also, check the last diary entries from the finnish lighthouse society’s last blog entries including our stay: http://www.majakkaseura.fi/eng/market/market_diary_2011/diary_091011/ http://www.majakkaseura.fi/eng/market/market_diary_2011/diary_101011/ http://www.majakkaseura.fi/eng/market/market_diary_2011/diary_111011/ If someone would ask me if I wanted to join them to the Market Reef again – there is no other possible answer than ”YES!”.

So, yesterday went on as usual (Sunday). Conditions was quite bad and when Teemu finished the SAC SSB contest almost all bands was dead. He still made some 2200 QSO’s during the contest wich was impressive with only a two element beam and a HF2V vertical. Tonight, I stayed up until about three, wich was about my common schedule (go to sleep at 03:00 – 04:30 somewhere), and at 01:10 when I was working OH6GHI/Peter, 40m was very dead, and we had a few minutes of ragchewing. Unfortunatly, the power system broke down during our QSO, and outside there was really powerful winds and rain. The winds almost knocked me to the ground. The solution was to shut down the wind generator wich was overloaded, and just run on batteries and diesel. Today, we heated up the sauna good and spent most of the evening in there. It was a great way to finish up the expedtion. Bands came to live this morning and we have been running all parts of the world on the highbands today. Even some US came thru on 40m in the morning (of course just an hour after I gave up and went to sleep), despite yesterdays high K levels. This is a truly wonderful place, both radio-wise and just about being here. Amazing! I feel quite sad that we have less than ten hours left on the reef before our transport back to Åland mainlands arrives. I’ll be back with a complete writeup when I landed at home. We still have a boat trip, ferry trip and a plane to catch to Gothenburg today.

Nu har vi äntligen fått upp 6-m rikten. Så nu blir det bidrag till NAC 50 MHz från oss i JO68EP. Ca 16m höjd. Marie -AFQ och Peter -VKC

Today the wind changed to north – northwest, and together with the old sea from the south it creates pretty big waves flushing more than 30% of the island. When writing this it’s much worse than it is on the pictures. We went out on a ’buoy rescue’ today. The buoy was moved earlier but today as the waves got larger it was in danger again. The plan was to retrieve it to the lighthouse, but as most of the eastern part of the island is flushed by waves we had to make a run in between the waves to get to the buoy. We decided to just move it into a safer location and try to ancor the chain between some rocks. On our way back we didn’t manage to get thru dry, the waves flushed us good up to the knees. Now drying up, and SM0W/Teemu has started to work the SAC SSB. Less than three hours into the contest, I just heard him giving out numbers above 500! As for conditions, this night was kinda slow with much static (S9 on 40m). We worked perhaps 150 NA on SSB and 200 on CW. 80m was pretty much dead. 10m and 12m provided some good JA runs on both CW and SSB during today. The HF9V might have to be moved again during the afternoon. It’s almost being flushed by the waves on the southern side. UPDATE 20:23z: More blogs from the Lighthouse Keepers http://www.majakkaseura.fi/eng/market/market_diary_2011/diary_061011/ http://www.majakkaseura.fi/eng/market/market_diary_2011/diary_071011/ http://www.majakkaseura.fi/eng/market/market_diary_2011/diary_081011/

I forgot to mention the reason why I posted a picture of the amplifier yesterday. When Juha installed the new coil in the amplifier it went ’boom’ on 24 MHz. Apparently the new coil was resonant on 24MHz and not exact like the old one. Anyway, nothing broke. It works like a charm again. This night we kinda gave up because of the dead bands, I think everyone had a descent nights sleep. We were awarded with good conditions during the day. 10m was amazing towards USA! Winds has been increasing during the day. This morning it was calm and in the afternoon winds were powerful, it started to rain, and we had to move the HF9V wich was almost hit by the waves, and would probably have been gone by now since winds are above storm level now. Unfortunatly, we just had another ’pop’ this evening. Me and Teemu was taking a very nice sauna (seen in another post), when we got back there was several power outages and the high winds caused the wind generator to go bananas. It procuded so high voltages that the controlling unit and the power inverters jumped into failure mode. After some phonecalls and resetting of units, it was decide to turn off the wind generator and just run from the batteries thru the inverters until the backup diesel generator kicks in and load up the batterys. Hopefully the wind will calm down during the weekend and the wind generator could be used again. Teija and Liisa, our hosts from the Finnish Lighthouse Society also does some blogging of our stay, see: http://www.majakkaseura.fi/eng/market/market_diary_2011/diary_041011/ http://www.majakkaseura.fi/eng/market/market_diary_2011/diary_051011/ Official OJ0X blog: http://www.qrz.com/db/OJ0X

As I am writing this, we were hit by aurora just a couple of hours ago, and most bands died quickly. We were running a good NA pileup on 10m when it suddenly started to close, and local stations came in with powerful aurora distortion. On the positive side we worked many SM/OH/LA/OZ on 10m that probably is in the skip zone most of the time. Most bands showed good signs before the aurora hit. Lowbands was good for DX during the night. The premisses has really been taken care of since my last visit in 2007. It’s starting to look more like a hotel than an abandoned lighthouse. The Finnish Lighthouse Society has been doing a great job! Last night was quite stormy and rumours has it the Market Reef Ghost visited us…. (p.s. internet still sucks d.s.)

We arreived safely on time this morning. Weather looked quite unfavourable, but after a descent boat ride that wasn’t too bad, we arrived at the Market Reef safe. Winds came in from south, where the waves was quite large. On the north side where we landed it was almost calm sea. Very nice and the team change went without problems.

We had tons of problems getting internet to work, and the only location it works right now is at the top of the lighthouse (where I am right now, and it’s VERY windy tonight!). We worked around 1750 QSO’s today and 15m showed some good openings for DX.

Will try to fix internet some other day and upload some pictures.