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.

The trip to Stockholm wentwell, in good time. But we got a ’minor problem’ in Stockholm and the GPS told us that we would hit Grisslehamn ferry terminal ten minutes AFTER departure. The GPS got better along the way (hi) and we got aboard the ferry with some minutes to spare. For the night we landed in a hotel called ”Savoy” in Mariehamn where we met up with Martti and Juha for a good supper. We will depart early tomorrow to make the boat trip at 05:30z. We were also informed that the boat trip will be 1h 30m instead of the regular 45m because of a detour (closed area at sea). On the picture is SM0W/Teemu with fragments of our packings.

A few weeks ago, SM0W/Teemu asked if I’d like to join a mini expedition to the Market Reef. Having been there with almost the same team four years yearlier (2007) it would be plain stupidity to turn this great offer down. Said and done, I asked to get one week off work with short notice and it turned out to be no problem at all. Today the last piece of the trip was put together by booking my flight between Gothenburg and Arlanda on monday the third of October. Teemu will pick me up and we’ll go to Grisslehamn for the ferry towards OH0 where we will spend the night with the rest of the team before departuring to OJ0 early tuesday morning if the weather is on our side. Two teams has already aired OJ0X since 20th September and we will be the last team to run this time. Teammates will be OH2BH/Martti, OH1ND/Juha and SM0W/Teemu. CU on the air. I will try to keep the club blog updated with pictures during the expedition, if the mobile broadband works as well as it did in 2007. NEWSFLASH 2011-10-01 15:30z: Weather is getting worse, so the team is preparing to be able to make an early landing on Monday if it keeps getting worse. Stay tuned… 73 de SM6U, Rick

SM6YOF/Jompe skickade lite bilder från veckans aktiviteter. Till höger syns SK6AW/p från ramberget i tisdagens multi-NAC. Under gårdagens arbetsdag var det riktigt bra drag, i styrkan ingick SM6YOF, SM6XMY, SA6BAW, SA6BGR, SM6MIS, SM6GBM, SM6ERS & SM6IQD. 15 masten fick den nya winschen monterad och avprovad med UFB resultat. Vår lannabo-vertikal för 10-20 meter som tidigare varit monterad på LV-Kullen hundra meter från stugan har nu plockats ned och monterats på den lilla masten bakom stugan istället. På så vis kan vi förhoppningsvis återhämta oss på några band i mindre skala tills allt är återställt efter sommarens vandalism. Gräset runt stugan klipptes av -YOF. Tryck här för bilder! (kompletterat med bilder från SM6GBM/Göran)