CY9C St. Paul Island DXpedition

 I was having a look at the bands to see if I could have a few DX contacts. First I heard a lot CW stations on 21 MHz and could with difficulty make out UN7TX mentioning his callsign several times without CQ or anything else. Then I thought that a DXpedition may be around, but could not copy other rather fast CW stations well. Moved on to 10 MHz and to my surprise, heard a few SSB stations in unknown language. I have never heard anything great on 30m so far. Checked DXWATCH.COM for any possible leads, with the filter set to 30m. Though I could not find anything about the frequencies on which I had heard SSB stations on 30m, I could see several spots for CY9C around 10132 kHz. But all of them were FT8. Moving to QRZ.COM, it told me that it was St. Paul Island DXpedition. The DXpedition website mentions that they are on the air currently and the schedule of activation is from August 26 - September 5, 2024.


Interestingly, as it is an island with a lighthouse. St. Paul counts for Parks on the Air, Lighthouse and Islands on the Air (IOTA) awards, a triple bonanza! Currently the light station is automated using solar panels. Other than radio amateurs and Canadian Coast Guard, birdwatchers and SCUBA divers are the other occasional visitors to the uninhabited island. As it has a fragile ecosystem, visits should be cleared in advance by the Canadian Coast Guard on behalf of the Government of Canada. The island is inhabited by numerous seabirds, creating interest for birdwatchers.

They are planning to operate on all bands 160-6m, on SSB, FT8 using Super Fox mode and RTTY. Operations above 6 m are also planned with 2m, 70cm and even satellite operations and EME! For satellite operations they are considering mainly IO-117 or GreenCube. There is no mention of FM satellites or Linear Satellites in the band plan. I was happy to see that they are likely to post satellite activation on  https://hams.at/, a site which some of us in this region are also fond of. But a quick check there did not show any posts from them at the moment. Anyway I have no chance as I work only LEO FM satellites and their location is too far off.

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