VP6D Ducie Island 2018 DX-pedition
(OC-182)
We are honored to have received a grant from the ARRL’s Colvin Award Committee.
The Colvin Award is funded by an endowment established by Lloyd D. Colvin, W6KG (SK). More information can be found at:
http://www.arrl.org/colvin-award-grants We appreciate the ARRL’s confidence in, and support of, VP6D.
We’re pleased to announce that Rob Fanfant N7QT has joined the VP6D team.
Rob is a DX-pedition veteran whose most recent project was VK9MA Mellish Reef in 2017. Previous projects include: VK9WA Willis Island, Manihiki E51MQT, Montserrat VP2MQT, Austral Islands (TX5Z), Christmas Island, Australia(VK9AN), San Andres (5J0X , HK0/N7QT), Sint Maarten (PJ7/N7QT), Saba (PJ6/N7QT), Austral Islands TX5D), Saint Lucia (J6/N7QT), Saint Lucia (J6/N7QT). We think you will agree that Rob is well qualified for the project and we are happy to add him to the team.
As we march towards our departure date of October 16th the project is on schedule. A VP6D working group is currently in Northern California preparing the equipment for shipment to Braveheart in New Zealand. On August 3rd we had the pleasure of meeting Eric Swartz WA6HHQ at the Elecraft factory where we were introduced to the Elecraft team and toured the factory. We then accepted 8 complete K3s stations for use at VP6D. Thanks to Elecraft and all our corporate sponsors for their ongoing support.
Today we are continuing the tasks of integrating the radios, computers, software, configuring the network and preparing the shipping cases. We plan an end to end test, from the keyboard to the BGAN to the log server in the cloud . We expect to have the equipment ready for the customs broker by Weds, Aug 7th.
Thanks for your continued interest and support of VP6D.
73,
Team Ducie – 2018