3Y0K: D(rama)Xpedition to Bouvet

Recent events regarding this year's attempt to activate Bouvet Island have made for very interesting reading and I hope that once the dust settles, we DXers will be treated to "the rest of the story".

Official word from the team's leadership has been sparse but two team members - each of whom paid huge sums of money to participate - have dropped out...with no refunds being forthcoming.

The two DXpeditioners are Krassy Petkov K1LZ and Greg Hernández KP4PK.

22 Oct: Krassy's open letter to the DX community is here

13 Feb: And, today - Greg's is here

Both ops cite similar reasons for leaving but only Greg did so voluntarily.

As of now (14 Feb, 0030Z) the ship (Argus) that will transport the remaining team to Bouvet is en route to Cape Town where the team will board the ship. It is due to arrive 17 Feb at 0600 local time.

The Argus can be tracked here. 

QRP Labs...will the wonders never cease?!

Hans G0UPL announced today that he is using new (not yet released to the masses) firmware that allows the QMX+ to emulate one of his first kits - the Ultimate 3S.

The U3S is a many-mode beacon transmitter that offers some amazing functionality, especially given its low price.

It is primarily used as a WSPR transmitter but is also capable of Hellschreiber, Opera, QRSS, all of the JT modes and more; plus automatic band-switching and GPS control of frequency.

I built one about 14 years ago and I still have it today; in fact, it's operating on 20m WSPR as I type.

The QMX+ has become the QSX and now the U3S. 

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Hilltopper Tallboy: Building, aligning, testing and on the air

 

I've had a hankering to build something lately and happened across a relatively new offering from the 4 States QRP Group: the Hilltopper Tallboy, a monoband QRP CW transceiver kit.

Available for 15 to 40 meters (and maybe 60m soon), I ordered a 20m version. It arrived 5 or 6 days later and I started building it right away.

The Build 

The kit's contents were well organized as were the accompanying instruction.

Parts are sorted into one of 10 bags and the assembly follows the bag's numerical sequence. There are exceptions to this as parts are sometimes required from the ESD bag or the bag containing the matched crystals.

 

The largest bag - and the one responsible for my initial impression of "Man, that's a substantial kit!" - is the one containing the mechanical components: knobs, jacks, hardware, etc.

Status of OHR-100A build; Tallboy (20m) arrives

OHR-100 status - click for larger

The 20m OHR-100A kit build is progressing nicely but with a few slowdowns.

Capacitor values can be referred to in a variety of ways and, in the case of the kit's build instructions, both ways are used. The inventory sheet and the step-by-step instructions each use different methods to refer to some (most) of the capacitors.

'82' in the inventory means 82pF. But '820' in the instructions also means 82 pF.

Also, a few are missing. Four of the same value are called for; I have three.

Fortunately, Mouser has no minimum order and they are quick to ship.

No biggie, it'll just take a bit longer to complete the build than I'd anticipated. But the kit has sat unbuilt for 30 years; what's a few more revolutions on the big blue marble...

As a consolation, my Hilltopper Tallboy arrived today and there's more to it than I expected.

Video: Winter Field Day 2026

This year's WFD was mostly a POTA event. I started out giving my WFD exchange but got only POTA exchanges in return. The only known WFD for me were on SSB.

Conditions were good - plenty of North American stations on both CW & SSB, Germany on CW and Spain on phone.

And the weather? Fantastic - I rode home with the jacket stowed.

Goethe State Forest (US-4622) is an amazing place.

I've activated it before but only from the parking area. This time, I rode throughout the forest prior to getting on the air and I had the place to myself. Didn't see another soul for the 3 hours that I was riding/activating.

Here's the vid (directly on YouTube):

 

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