Samoa, 5W0, qrv 6m EME August 2011

W7GJ, Lance, has changed plans and is not going to Tuvalu. He will be in Samoa last week of August working 6 meters EME. This is the email received:

Hello!

In order to provide the most possible advance time for stations to get ready, I am now announcing the upcoming 6m EME DXpedition from the northeast corner of Savai'i Island, Samoa during the final week of August, 2011.  License and airline tickets are now in hand.  The planned operation schedule, DXpedition details and Google Earth photo of the operating QTH are shown on my web page:

http://www.bigskyspaces.com/w7gj/Samoa2011.htm

As you can see on the above website, any contributions are gratefully being accepted.
  Last year's operation from 3D2LR resulted in contacts with 52 different stations via 6m EME (26,000,000 miles' worth of contacts), and there are more and larger stations QRV now, so I sure will do my best to try to better that record.

For European stations, I expect my mooonrises to be the best, since they are all over water, and take place in the middle of the night or early in the morning my local time, so there is little chance of any interference from ionization toward the east.
However, I think I also may be able to accommodate some European stations during your moonrise early in the operation.  For North American stations, I will be elevating to match your moonsets during the last weekend in August when EME cndx are optimal.

If you still need Samoa on 6m, and have at least a 5 element beam and a 6m amplifier, I hope to be able to put you in the log and provide a nice photo QSL for you ;-)

All the operation will be on JT65A mode.  If you are not experienced with it yet, you have four full months to gear up ;-)  If you live in an area with high noise or lack ground gain due to "ground clutter" or interfering HF beams, think about adding elevation to reduce your local noise and let me take care of the extra gain during my moonrise out over the ocean!  As an example, W7CE added elevation to his single 6M9KHW and he was the third station I worked during my first moonrise over the water from 3D2LR last September (even though the Degradation was 5.1 dB at that time).

Please refer to my website for tips on how to set up JT65 for most successful operation on 6m EME:
http://www.bigskyspaces.com/w7gj/JT65.pdf

As in my last two 6m EME DXpeditions, I don't expect to have real time access to the internet, but I will try to provide an updated list of stations worked and photos when I can get to a nearby location with internet access.  Let's make some half million mile Magic on the Magic Band next August ;-)

In the meantime, best wishes for a successful summer Es season!  GL and DX!  VY 73, Lance
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Lance Collister, W7GJ