April 15th
Conditions were sad enough for this day of departure, so a little in tune with our state of mind as we leave Saint Brandon. The weather was very bad with heavy rain, wind, and a local phenomenon of mini tidal waves. This constrained us to QRX the time to secure our antennas and equipment.
The propagation was also capricious all day long with high bands not quite open until mid-afternoon. The surprise of the day will undoubtedly that we have been able to contact some NA stations on 12m! This gives us some hope for the latst night with the whole team. We will continue our efforts until the departure of the boat at sunrise. A new symbolic cap of 70,000 Qso seems to be in the line of fire!
The 80 and 160m antennas were dismountes this morning after a good last night on these two bands. Some JA were able to be contacted on 160 with very good signals coming at the time of our sunset, as for the NA they had to wait for our SR but many could again be logged.
To summarize now the overall planning 3B7, 6 members of the team leave the South Island tomorrow Monday at dawn, this marks the first end of the expedition. However, 3B7A will remain sporadically on the air for two days as F4FET Guillaume and F4HAU Diégo will take another boat on Wednesday morning. They will keep with them antennas for all bands (except 80/160) and two stations. They will no longer be able to update the log and it will be necessary to wait until Thursday to find the final version on Clublog. After corrections, we will open QSL requests via OQRS.
Last night so for the majority of us, I immediately return to the pile-ups to continue to give you an opportunity to contact Saint Brandon.