Equipment

We are delighted that Yaesu have already agreed to be Principal Sponsors of 3B7C, permitting the use of the new FT-2000 transceivers along with the well-proven Quadra linear amplifiers.

Leading UK amateur radio retailers Martin Lynch and Sons and Nevada Communications have also committed to supporting the expedition, for which we are extremely grateful. In addition, the team has already been granted an ARRL Colvin Award, while recent sponsors include the Northern California DX Foundation and CDXC (Chiltern DX Club, the UK DX Foundation)

We are planning to have 12 stations. There will be a station on every band from 160m to 6m with second stations on 80m and 20m so that we can operate on CW and SSB at the same time. Our propagation predictions show that we should have good propagation on all bands 15m and below but that there will be significant openings to Japan and perhaps elsewhere on 12m and 10m. 6m is unpredictable but could produce surprises. We expect about 160 man-hours per day of propagation.

We are taking 14 transmitting antennas as follows:

In addition to the above we will have a number of receiving antennas including Beverages, loops, dipoles etc. We hope to experiment with a new design for LF reception.

We will be using the StarLog computer system. Logs will be uploaded by satellite telephone or Pactor.

We will also need to take generators and fuel.