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Brunei 2007 - By Tom - GM4FDM tom@gm4fdm.com
Tom GM4FDM/V8FDM in the V8 shack working RTTY Having done a search of DX Summit for V8 cluster sport for the last 5 years, I came to the conclusion that there was mileage to be gained from an expedition to Brunei Darussalam, especially on the low bands where there have only been a handful of cluster spots each year. Its interesting to note the philosophy of the 5 star DX Group who believe that they can get down the food chain to the dipoles and the G5RVs after all the Kilowatts have come and gone. I think we also noted that in 2001 when we went to VP8 - The Falkland Islands. Not a rare DX location, but the pileups never really faded. And so it would prove to be from Brunei. After my trip to Benin, I swore I'd never remain in contact with a pilot station or have a log search or internet connection. I'm of the opinion that this is a double edged sword for a small expedition. But, more of this later. I sought travelling companions in early 2007 and Ronald PA3EWP who was with me in Benin, and Flo F5CWU who was on the same T33C expedition, answered the call. Second rule of expeditioning is, find a local on the ground who can help. Again the Internet came into play and a search again of the most popular spots revealed V85SS as the most active ham in Brunei at the moment. V85SS replied almost instantly that he was actually in the process of building a shack for rent and offered to host our expedition. The fact that he had a tower and a 5 element tri-band yagi was the clincher. He also revealed that V85RH (known locally as Robin Hood) had contacts with the licensing department and he would take care of the V8 licenses. We decided to make a serious effort on 160 and 80m, which in effect meant a serious antenna. Things moved very quickly after that and an early winter date was chosen between the CQ World Wide Contests as all of us like to participate in the various CQWW events. Everything was going to plan until we costed shipment to Brunei of my ACOM amplifier and Ronald's V160 Titanex vertical for 160 / 80m. DHL wanted £350 to ship my amplifier one way to Brunei whilst Ronald faired little better with FedEx in Holland who wanted around €1,000 to ship the Titanex and Control Box. So it was back to the drawing board. We had not planned until that point to seek sponsorship, but if a serious attempt was to be made at 160 / 80m we needed both the amplifier and the Titanex. Fortunately sponsors came to our aid. Our principal sponsor was the Battlecreek Special shipping and maintenance fund, who made the magnificent donation of $1,000 which solved the Titanex problem overnight. We took off from London's Heathrow airport on Saturday 3 November stopping briefly at Dubai in the middle of the night before landing at Bandar Seri Begawam in the morning of 4 November to be met by Ambran V85SS and his daughter. Our only problem was Flo trying to tell the customs officer in Pidgin English why we had 6 x 12m fibre glass fishing poles but no fishing reels or tackle. We were driven straight to the shack which was in the grounds of Ambran's home. The shack had a reasonable size of garden with a well trimmed grass. Sunday was spent assembling our four square for 40m, erecting the 30m vertical in the jungle, preparing the Titanex for the next morning, and building one station. We made a few QSOs on the beam on the Sunday night, but we were all pretty well bushwhacked having been on the go for over 30 hours. We rose at first light next morning, and after a quick breakfast, finished assembling the Titanex. The Titanex was to be mounted on the edge of the jungle next to Ambran's property which meant that the beverages were also to be in the jungle. When I say jungle, I mean jungle. Ambran's house and roadway have been hacked out of he jungle. By the time we added the radials to the 30m vertical, erected the Titanex, added the radials, darkness was again beginning to fall. It was a sight to see Ronald hacking his way through the jungle with his kukri threading radials and pulling the wire of the beverage. The weather at this point was dry, though it did shower a little in the afternoon. Both the temperature and the humidity was very high necessitating a large intake of water. On the Monday evening we discovered a Brunei treasure - take-away. We had a choice of Italian Pizza, Indian or Chinese Cuisine, all delivered to our shack by moped, all very cheap. Ronald started operating on
80m at 1100gmt or 1800 local time. First station in the 80m log was JA2CXF.
He was quickly followed by Other notable GMs in the 80m log were GM3PPE, YTS, 4YSN. We eventually got going on the 6th on 160m as the previous night the band was too noisy without the beverages. Fortunately Gavin GM0GAV had made us up beverage transformers and end terminating resistors. These proved a very valuable asset and meant we didn't have to fabricate something out there. Strangely enough Gavin was the first GM station in the log on 160m The Titanex was right on the edge of the jungle. We had in excess of 40 radials on it (after 40 I stopped counting). We had a beverage for North America which doubled for Japan and another for Europe. It would be fair to say that without the beverages, we would not have been able to work on 160m. Second GM in the log on 160m was GM3POI, followed by GM4YXI, GM3YTS, GM3UA. Operation on 160m and 80m were shared by Flo and Ronald who are just gluttons for punishment. Some night there was no propagation on 160m so we stayed on 80m and either 40m or 30m. On nights when there was propagation we stayed on 160m swapping over to 80m in the lulls. It would have been nice to have separate antennas for 80m and 160m, but we simply couldn't afford to ship a second Titanex. After the second full day of operating we established a routine. In general the bands closed about 0900 local time until just after lunch. During this time, we ate, showered, washed our clothes, titivated the antennas, emailed our logs, checked the spots etc., we were seldom idle. After lunch we started on 17m, moving to 15m, 12m and 10m if there was propagation. 10m and 12m only opened on a couple of days and the openings although intense, tended to be brief. We tended to concentrate on CW as the majority of the active V8s operate only SSB hence the reason we didn't make a vast number of QSOs on 20m. I began operating on RTTY on 6 November on 17m with F5MOO being the first in the log. A run of Europeans was interspersed with the odd VK station. GM0UDL was the first GM station in the log on RTTY, followed by GM4FAM on 30m I had been operating for most of the day on the first Friday, had handed over to Flo, eaten and gone to bed intent on an early start. Around 10pm I was awakened from a deep sleep, by Ronald who urged me to get up as we had visitors. After a few expletives I rose to be greeted by V85RH, V85TT and V8BDS. It transpired that BDS's daughter was married to the Crown Prince of Brunei - the Sultan in waiting. A very important man. He is also the President of the Brunei Amateur Radio Society. We sat and chatted, drinking copious amount of tea and coffee until I noticed that it was almost 3am. Was there any propagation that night on 160 or 80m? We will never know. Just before leaving BDS announced that he would throw a barbecue in our honour. This was set for the Monday evening. Around 7pm on the Monday evening, Geoffrey V8ASC arrived with a vanload of food and barbecues on which to cook it. There was enough food to feed the 5,000. He set too with great gusto and was soon joined again by V85TT and V85RH, V8BDS and a few other V8s whose callsigns, I unfortunately did not record. We enjoyed, beef, chicken, fish and lots of seafood, all done to a "T" on the BBQ by Geoffrey. Again we drank loads of coke, fanta, tea and coffee and enjoyed the hospitality. Unfortunately we missed yet another night of operating as by the time they all left around 4am we were too full up to even think about operating. Brunei hospitality was really enjoyable. Rahaman V85RH arranged to pick us up in his 4 x 4 (everybody has a 4x4 Petrol is 50p a gallon). He showed us around the City of Bandar arranging the time of our visit so that we managed a glimpse and a wave from the Sultan as he left his Palace for an engagement. The Sultan's Palace is the largest Palace in the World and just oozes opulence. We visited the largest Mosque in the Region, Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque which has a stone boat in the lagoon (a replica of a 16th-century mahligai barge), and also the water village - Kampung Ayer, home to some 30,000 local village people. We went up river in a water taxi to see the Proboscis Monkey a very rare species only to be found in the wild in Borneo. We visited a real Chinese restaurant and enjoyed real Chinese food. The weather of Brunei is completely different to anything I have experienced before. The humidity is always high. Brunei consists mainly of tropical rain forest and when I say rain - I mean rain. Some days it came down in vertical sheets for hours on end. The ground flooded and our vertical bases were under water. After the rain the humidity shot up and the air conditioning of the shack was a godsend. Ambran our host was usually available to run us into town or to the supermarket as required. All too soon our trip came to an end. We had almost 20,000 QSOs in the log. This was our target and I'm sure if we hadn't missed the two nights operating and had not spent so much time on 160 and 80m we would have broken the target easily, but I'm sure those station who worked us on those bands were very pleased by our efforts. I don't think we made the east coast of the USA on 160m, but now a days its hard to tell if that W2 is in New York or New Orleans. Our results are as follows.
We made 722 QSOs on 160m and 1,673 on 80m. We made over 1,550 QSOs on RTTY. Back to the Internet. During the second week especially, we received many requests for skeds, requests to QSY to a specific band or mode for a single QSO, repeat QSOs as perhaps our on-line log had not been updated for whatever reason. Its just not possible for a small expedition to accommodate every request at the drop of a hat, although we did try to work around the 160m requests. We just did not have the time to read a lot of emails. QRM - yes we suffered from QRM. Some nights both 40m and 30m were totally unusable due to the "Chinese radar" covering the whole band for what seemed like hours. In that part of the World, especially in the jungle areas where the internet or even the telephone has not yet penetrated, radio is a valuable communication tool. During daylight hours, 30m and 40m were full of stations conversing in USB. I'm told they were from Indonesia but I couldn't decipher the language. But making QSOs on those bands was extremely difficult at times. On my last morning on 17m RTTY, I was plagued by a station running a carrier either on my frequency or on the frequency of the stations I was trying to work. I should also like to mention another problem specific to RTTY. I have read this elsewhere. When using RTTY PLEASE DO NOT TAIL END QSOs. Two main reasons - I could not tell if the QSO was complete because of new callers over-riding the station I was presently working. When people tail end at exactly the same time with a similar message in their F4 button it is impossible to single out a call sign, even a partial. Stations were S3 or S4 at best and it became just impossible. QSO rates dropped to 1 QSO every 2 minutes. No amount of pleading "spread out" or QSX UP, UP, UP made any difference whatsoever. It's a sad fact but there were UK stations in there too. The only fly in the ointment was, when FedEx delivered my ACOM amplifier back to my home, it had suffered a major drop and the front panel was smashed. As I write this I am still arguing with FedEx. As we were leaving Bandar Seri Begawan airport we were met and taken for lunch by V85RH and V85TT with whom we spent a very enjoyable afternoon. Have you ever tried to explain to a Brunei Customs officer the purpose of a band pass filter? Ronald and Flo were killing themselves at my puerile attempts. 20 hours later and we were back in London and Brunei 2007 was history. All three of us would like to thank our sponsors. The Battlecreek Special shipping and maintenance fund, The GMDX Group, The Chiltern DX Club, The RSGB, BARTG, GDXF, EUDXF and the Clipperton DX Club. In addition we received several personal donations from MM0BQI, G0JHC, K4ESE, G4WFQ and last but not least Mr D Kepkay. Without all your help and support we could not have made it to Brunei. We just could not have worked on 160 or 80m with 100 watts and wire antennas. Thank you everybody who supported us. Our QSL routes have been well
published, V8FWP to PA7FM, V8FWU and V8FDM to our home calls. All buro
cards will be returned via the Buro and we shall publish our logs on LOTW
in due course.
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