I don’t really have time to do a full write-up, but I made a “quick” trip to American Samoa over the weekend to plan a future scientific instrument installation and managed to get on the air for a few hours. Here are some snapshots from my phone.
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- Snapshot of Utulei village near my hotel.
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- The “Main Road” in American Samoa.
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- The road up to (or rather, down from, in this case) the research/operating position.
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- 184 steps lead down to the point where I operated. Although I left the antenna set up overnight, that was a hike even with the relatively light K2, computer, and provisions.
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- From the point, looking back toward the pump shack where my equipment and operating position were.
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- Looking about due West from the antenna location. JA is actually to the right of this photo. The upshot is that I had a clear all-water path to JA, EU, and NA, and sometimes the band was open all three places at once.
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- The “GU Special” fully extended for 40 meters. This is facing approximately North, or toward EU. 40 meters was a bust with lots of radar and freebander interference.
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- The operating position at KH8/K8GU. Poor ergonomics but it was good enough to make almost 1200 QSOs in about 12 hours of operating over two days.
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- Moonset captured on my way up to the Observatory one morning.
