The K1N Navassa Island DXPedition is nearly finished as of this writing. It was the first
time Navassa Is. has been active in over 22 years. Here's what I got
during their activation:
It was very well run, in my opinion, and was very enjoyable for me. I happened to be home sick during this time, and since most of my contacts were via CW & RTTY, I didn't have to use my voice much. Some contacts were quick and easy, others not so much. I think my 30m CW contact took about 4 hours and spanned a 3 day period...but I finally got through :-)
My "hat is off" to those on the DXPedition team, they certainly had to tolerate their share of intentional QRM and jamming. I think the worst case of jamming and intentional interference that I saw during their activities came from a group that came down and intentionally parked right on the K1N operating frequency of 3.725 just shortly after 03:00Z on 2/12. Since K1N was operating split, callers were all over a piece of the band from about 3.735 to about 3.765. It seems that a small group of people have a net on "their" frequency of 3.765 each night and claimed they had been on that frequency every night for the last xxx years. So, in their minds, it was OK to come sit on top of K1N and whine, complain, and moan for quite some time and totally disrupt the operation. K1N simply moved down about 5 khz and kept on rolling, but the complainers didn't know this, and continued their tomfoolery for a while longer. Oh well, after they told everyone off about how the DXPedition should pick a different frequency and various other fine points of operation, they moved on and all continued.
I worked a "K1N" station on 12m CW on the 11th, and never saw it appear in the logs. I was listening to hear and maybe "rework" them later in the week, and read that there had been a pirate on 12m CW and many folks worked him, but didn't actually work the "real" K1N. I think I'm one of those people, hahahaha...
It was an entertaining DXPedition, one of the more enjoyable ones I've worked in quite some time. Thanks to the KP1-5 project team for this awesome event. There's lots more info online about this, including photos, videos, online log check, various news bits, etc at http://navassadx.com/log.htm
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UPDATE: 2/23/15: A great closing interview with K1N is at http://www.mdxc.org/k1n-interview-for-mdxc-by-w0gj/
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