The last few DXpedition stations I have worked were almost unbearable due to very poor operating practices and the normal frequency police and the jammers that just want to cause problems for no real reason.
I have been following the FT5ZM operation for some time thinking it would be a nice one to have, a very rare DX entity and about as far from Idaho as you can get. With my pewee antenna farm and 100w I knew it would be tough, but tough is not close to how it was it was painful !
The window of opportunity to work such a location from the PNW is narrow only a few hours a day morning was my best chance so my buddy K7BUY who lives in Ore. decided we would meet VIA text message at 0700 each morning and give it a try. K7BUY runs 100w to a very long wire. Our first morning was on 30m CW it was a mess more later on that, well Larry pulled it off and in the first hour had snagged them very good DX CW op. Well I was not so lucky so for the next 8 days a couple of hours in the morning and a little in the evening which was a very small window I soldered on.
For me this was the hardest fought battle for a new DX country that I had ever had, remember 100w 100 foot random wire and a flag pole vertical that was my tool box. The real problem was not the small station layout but the non stop bad operating and jamming most of the time you could not hear the DX station although much of the time he had a very good signal. For days this went on never in the clear.
It astounds me that most of the offenders that did not grasp the concept of split operation were one by 2 Extra class calls, I am still amazed at how bad it was hard to explain but you know if you worked this one. What does it take? How many of these operations are spoiled by bad operators....many but this was by far the worst ever in my opinion.
Europe was no better jamming, calling on DX freq. never ended, anyway up to day 8, I worked them this morning on 20m SSB first call, no jammers no one calling on Freq. he was in the clear and I could hear him, honestly thought this one may not happen for me.
I hope when we see the articles in the magazines they do not brush this aside, behavior like this is becoming the norm, I do not have the answer but this one reflected very badly on the ham community.
Well you know the ending, make the best of what you have, get on and have fun...and lets all try to set good examples on the air....73
