News
News #14 (December 17, 2023)
The T2C team wishes everyone in the DX world a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Our QSL manager does hard work. So far, he has received over 4,000 direct inquiries and has already sent over 1,200 letters to date. All direct applicants receive a quick LoTW confirmation. Direct shipping continues, bureau QSLs will follow in a few months.
The full log will be uploaded to LoTW in April 2024, 6 months after the end of the DXpedition.
And where do we go next?
News #13 (November 16, 2023)
Our QSL is finished by www.qsl-shop.com and will be printed soon.
All of our major individual sponsors and foundations receive a photo book of our DXpedition in letter size.
cover picture of photo book
News #12 (November 8, 2023)
As of November 2nd, all team members are back in Germany.
Our QSL manager DL4SVA is still busy checking carefully all log related comments. A lot of people who are not listed in our online log – especially in FT8 – have contacted us to get a QSO confirmed. We are checking all requests against the MSHV ALL.TXT file. This is a very time intensive process. Thank you for your patience.
DL4SVA also removed a significant amount of dupe FT8-QSOs within 3-minute time window. His decision is final. A corrected log will be uploaded to Club Log later today.
Once the log correction is finished, all new sponsors will be listed on our homepage and they will immediately receive their LoTW confirmations. Early December, we should receive the printed QSL cards and will start mailing them out.
News #11 (October 29, 2023)
Our adventurous and lightweight DXpedition T2C is coming to an end. The climate on the island is challenging: temperatures never fell below 27°C with very high humidity. We even had three days without any rainfall and others with heavy rain. The people on the island are very friendly, but after three weeks we have covered more or less the whole ground. All operators are very satisfied with the result given the simple antennas and significant space restrictions. We had lots of fun. The last station will be QRT around 10 UTC October 30. We have reached more than 110 k QSO plus roughly 4,000 QSOS from CQ WWDX SSB.
Our QSL manager DL4SVA will check the logbook for errors after our return to Germany. Additionally, several completed FT8 QSOs within a 3-minute window will be consolidated into one. If you have any questions about the log, please send an email to dl4sva@darc.de or T2C.QSL@mydx.de. QSLs should be available in December 2023. Please note: If T2C did not send RR73 or 73, it is not a QSO.
Tomorrow we leave Tuvalu. A short meeting with Antoine, 3D2AG, is planned in Suva.
News #10 (October 25, 2023)
The remaining six men on the team exceeded the 100,000 QSO mark. They are QRV from 60 to 6 m with three stations 24 hours a day and will take part in the CQ WWDX Contest. One broken Expert amplifier started to work again. We paid several 100 AUD for internet access.
On Monday, we met the director of the Nauti primary school and made a donation for a new drinking water filter. We also met T2AM, a local busy man without ham radio equipment. Another ham from Tuvalu T2AT is very sick and not QRV anymore.
The last QRV day is Monday, October 30. Return flights begin locally at midday on October 31.
News #9 (October 22, 2023)
Today afternoon we had an unexpected longer power cut. Sorry guys – we lost a lowband shift. The BOGs are working quite well from our site but sometimes we experience one-way conditions to EU.
On local Monday and Tuesday we have to pack and not all stations will be manned anymore. Tuesday the half of the team returns to Germany with half of the equipment. That means no more 80 and 160 m traffic. Starting Tuesday we will operate with three stations. Two of them with amp. It seems the K3 for 6 m had a receiving problem last days. It was exchanged. From Tuesday we will work on 20 to 6 m and additional one band 30 or 40 or 60 m on a daily change in CW, SSB, FT8 and RTTY.
News #8 (October 19, 2023)
After 9 days on Funafuti Island, we conclude that the Funafuti Lagoon Hotel is not the best QTH for a ham radio operation but maybe the only one for a bigger group. Space for antennas is heavily limited with currently no way for an installation directly on the beach. We experienced a lot of noise on the lowbands originating from the hotel buildings. We installed two BOGs overnight in the construction area away from the hotel. These antennas help a lot to improve the receiving situation from 40 to 160 m. During the day, the BOGs must be dismantled due the work of the construction machines on this area. Conditions are generally poor on the lowbands, but fine above five MHz. 10 and 12 m show excellent signals over many hours. A surprise was 6 m. Contacts on 6 m were made with 5W, 3D2, BV, JA, VK, BA, PY, CE, YB, VR2, KH2, KH6. As an absolute highlight, we had an unexpected short opening to Italy and Sardinia on this band.
Despite these challenging conditions, the team is quite happy with the achieved QSOs. Up to now, we made over 70.000 contacts. Fortunately, we had no power outages so far. Most of the air conditioners are running day and night. The LTE internet is slow and expensive. The hotel WiFi is mostly close to unusable.
Yesterday Fred, DH5FS, and Christian, DL6KAC, gave a 30-minute interview, which will be broadcasted on the local AM radio station.
Bad News: Two Expert amplifiers died. We will see how to continue with this challenging situation. It probably means more FT8 operation (100 W) on some bands. Rest assured that we also will be active on CW and SSB.
Log correction hints ONLY to our QSL manager DL4SVA@darc.de please!
News #7 (October 14, 2023)
After just under 3 days, all of the planned antennas were set up. Since everything was organized from Germany, we weren't sure if we could achieve this. Up to date information about the island is very scarce. The temperature is around 31°C and it is often cloudy with heavy squalls and rain showers throughout the day. Humidity is very high, which makes working on antennas strenuous.
Our air-conditioned bungalows are fine, but we don't have much space for the antennas. Large construction machines had been in use all day long and cross the street in front of our bungalows. Therefore, we can only use the area adjacent to the bungalows so that we are not disturbing other guests. As the front part of the hotel area has been claimed from the sea, there is no beach (just rocks), which means we can’t install antennas there.
Our experienced team is in a good shape. We enjoy the excellent high band conditions to central Europe (> 15.000 km). This is only possible in the sunspot maximum. We are using simple but effective antennas and are very happy with 30.000 QSOs in 72 hours. All four stations are in operation 24/7 using a shift system. A fifth station is calling CQ on 50.313 kHz during daytime (FT8), at night we switch to 60 m.
Our two-element wire beam works very well from 20 to 10 m and produces large signals from the Europe until midnight on the high bands. The noise level is mostly S3-4, which is fine. However, sometimes we experience some type of broadband noise, which makes copying really difficult. Below 20 m we use isolated verticals with one elevated radial. On 160 m and 80 m the noise level is usually S9+, so we can only copy large stations on these bands. 60 m is a little better. Yesterday we installed a BOG-RX-antenna (Beverage on ground) at some distance from the hotel. The BOG improved the receiving situation and we are currently installing a second one. Remember that our goal is to work especially on the high bands with maximum sunspot levels.
A CQ FT8 “beacon” runs at 6 m throughout the day. We have been working VK8AW and some JA’s. Our CQ call had also been heard in South America. We are still hoping for a great opening.
The performance is stable and we can run each band at around 500 watts. The people are very nice and streets are pretty crowded with motorcycles and cars. Sometimes it feels like rush hour in a big city. The hotel WiFi is not realiable. We therefore obtained a local SIM card, which provides access via a LTE. LTE internet access is something more stable but slow and expensive as the uplink is provided via satellite.
We get a lot of messages like “Is my QSO on 40 m in the log?” or “mistake in the call” via our general email address. Please note, that we can’t answer this type of emails individually. Our QSL manager has an own email. Please check our daily log update on Clublog and if in doubt, work us again. Information about band openings are always very welcomed.
News #6 (October 10, 2023)
The exhausted team-members built up the first antennas in the early afternoon. The space for antennas is very restricted because the construction-works at the beach are still going on. We have to use the small space between the bungalows.
Late afternoon the verticals for 40 and 30m and the LZ-BEAM for 10 to 20m were completed.
The first shifts began early evening. First results are positiv, good pileups on 15-17 and 20m.
QRM-SITUATION during day-time is not that bad. Operators are in a good mood.
We have new pictures in our gallery.
News #5 (October 10, 2023)
After 5 flights from Germany via Los Angeles and Fiji we landed around noon safe in Tuvalu.
Weather: 32° C , rain and very high humidity.
We are beginning to equip the station-bungalow with the 4 stations. Heavy machines are still busy around the hotel-complex.
Hopefully they will finish their job soon, because the space for antennas is very restricted.
Let's keep the fingers crossed, that the qrm-situation will improve the next days.
News #4 (October 1, 2023)
One more week until we leave – everything is prepared.
We are in contact with Dom T22T, who is currently staying at our planned QTH, the Funafuti Lagoon Hotel. There is a lot of unexpected traffic around the hotel as well as electrical and acoustic noise due to large land claim activities including heavy construction machinery and workers from overseas. Due to T22T's current experience with high noise and limited space due to the construction work, we will carefully check viable solutions and possible look for a second QTH (probably with only a part of the team and material). It is difficult and expensive as we have arranged everything at the Funafuti Lagoon Hotel for the entire period. Remember that our focus is on higher bands, including 6m.
Rest assured we will do our best. At this point a big THANK YOU to all of our donors!
On October 23rd the low band antennas for 160 & 80 m will be dismantled and on October 24th half of the team will fly back with half of the material. The rest of the team will operate three stations from 40 to 6 m until the end of the expedition.
Of course, there will be news and pictures on our homepage.
This time we will also cover social media: DL6KAC will inform the DX community at https://twitter.com/T2C_2023 and DH5FS will spread information at
https://mastodon.radio/@dh5fs.
News #3 (July 26, 2023)
As most of you know, our team conducts every year a serious light weight DXpedition to rare to semi-rare DXCC entities. These are not vacation trips. We take proper technology – including a pentaplexer – as well as antennas with us and operate on all bands from 160 to 6 m (as far as possible) and use the most important and most popular operating modes CW, SSB, RTTY and FT8.
This year, the transport costs for our 12-man team amount to roughly €32,000. This includes four economy flights one-way, which means being on the road for more than 35 hours, plus additional baggage and excess length fees. The team members will start their journey on October 8th from different airports in Germany towards Tuvalu with stop-overs in London, Los Angeles and Fiji. In total, the team is transporting around 250 kg of well sorted radio equipment – with a luggage limit of 23kg per person plus a few kg of carry-on luggage.
The cost of accommodation and food amount to €20,000. On top of that, there will be other fees, costs for electricity, internet access for log uploads and homepage updates, separate radio room, gifts for guests, QSL cards, T-shirts as well as humanitarian support for the island. Almost the entire technology and antennas are provided privately by the members. Everyone in the team pays around €5,000 themselves.
We provide daily online log updates and we respect the rules of the DX Code of Conduct. On our homepage, we offer information about the team, the technology, and more importantly also about propagation, the Online QSL Request Service (OQRS), regular news updates and a way to contact us during the DXPedition. Important: This e-mail address is not intended for log corrections!
After two weeks on the island half of the team will fly back on October 24. The remaining six operators DL1KWK, DL4SVA, DL6KVA, DL7JOM, DL7VEE and DL8LAS will stay until October 30. In the last week, we will only be qrv on 40 m and higher. We will also participate in the CQ WW DX SSB contest.
News #2 (July 15, 2023)
We have to thank Mr. Opetaia Simati, Director Department of ICT, for confirming our license T2C. Another grateful thanks goes to the staff of the Funafuti Lagoon Hotel where we will stay in October.
Our Dxpedition logo was organized by Fred, DH5FS.
Thanks to Vincent, F4CVQ he has drawn our logo based on our ideas. You can see a palm thief, a species of crab found on Tuvalu. They are the biggest land living crabs and they are able to crack coconuts! At the bottom there are two Antenna Lionfishes to be found all over the West Pacific. They had also applied to be the main character in the logo, but as divers know, as an invasive species, they are not very popular on the reef. The antenna shown is the famous LZ wire beam, which will serve as main antenna on the high bands.
News #1 (July 3rd, 2023)
Our return to the Pacific is scheduled for fall 2023. With the help of Jared N7SMI and John KK7L, important details for Tuvalu - T2 could be clarified. It is really difficult to find perfect antenna opportunities on Funafuti Island.
As of July 1st 2023 we have all permits in hand. Accommodation as well as flights for our planned destination in October 2023 are booked and confirmed. This means we are ready to announce a new serious and lightweight expedition to Tuvalu.
The team consists largely of members of the 2022 P29RO expedition, supplemented by new experienced OPs. We are all looking forward to October 10 be on the air on an expedition to Tuvalu under T2C until October 30, 2023.
Some team members will leave a few days earlier.
It is planned to operate four stations with power amplifiers in CW, SSB, RTTY and FT8 from 160 to 6 m, including 60 m, 24 hours a day. The focus is on the higher bands.
