From October 4, 2023 until October 17, 2023 an international team of 10 operators will be active from Swains Island as W8S.
QRV on all HF bands in CW, SSB, FT8 and RTTY with 6 stations from 2 separated camps.
The base camp (Green Camp) will be established in the area of the old village. It is also the place where the landing will take place. The base camp will accommodate the support team, where we will have our meals and where we can relax when not on duty. It will also have a shower and toilet facility.
Sleeping tents for the operators will be next to the base camp.
We will have two operating sites, i.e. Red Camp and Blue Camp. These two camps will be separated approx. 400 meters.
A temporary operating site will be established more to the east, from where we will do our 6m EME operation.
The Red Camp will cover all bands 160-10m (except 80m). For the Hexbeam we will use a combiner for 20-15-10m. On 160m we will have a top-loaded vertical and for 40m a phased vertical. A K9AY will be used as a receiving antenna.
The Blue Camp will cover all bands 80-10m plus 6m. For 10-30m we have VDA’s and for 40m a vertical with elevated radials and for 80m a vertical with ground radials. A K9AY will be used as a receiving antenna. On 6m we use a 6-element yagi at 6 meters height. This antenna will also used temporarily for 6m EME on a location more to the east. This will be only for a limited number of days.
Each camp will have 3 fully equipped stations, K3(S) and SPE amplifiers. Between the K3 and SPE we will have 100W BPF’s and between the SPE and the antenna we use the 4O3A high power BPF’s.
For the 6m EME we will use a RF-kit RF2K-S amplifier.
A WiFi-bridge will connect the computer networks of the two camps.
We will use a Starlink satellite setup to have continuous internet access. This will be used for uploading our logs and LoTW confirmations.