Cook Islands 2005 by Tim Beaumont ZK1SDE 30/01/05 - 05/03/05
My plans to go back to ZK1 started in early 2004, I knew that by the time I had arrived in the
Cook Islands the 11 year solar cycle was going to be very near the minimum, but hey I like a challenge
and this was to be one hell of a challenge. The last activity I made from ZK1 was in October and November
of 2002 and most of my DX was made on 10m and 15m, using a 10m mono band antenna and an auto tuner,
I was surprised how well this performed and with my one man activation made 6,000 QSO's.
This time with the SFI being on the way down I know that I would have to concentrate my next expedition
on 15m, 17m and 20m with some low band work added.
The dates were set and my flights all booked along with my expedition travel guru Jed Berry.
My licence was renewed after my last trip and in fact doesn't expire until October 2005 so that
was one job that I didn't have bother with. I was surprised how early I had to book the flights this
time as in 2002 I booked my flight just weeks before my departure, this time the pricing structure with
Air New Zealand has changed and the later you book the more you pay, it was June 2004 and I was just
able to get my seat on the plane for £893 GBP although I did have to stay in Aitutaki Island for one
week longer than planned to keep the cost down, hey life's a beach!
My plan was to return to both Aitutaki Island OC-083 in the South Cook Islands and also spend a week on
Manihiki Atoll OC-014 in the North Cook Islands. I decided that instead of begging for sponsors to get
antennas it would be easier to have them made especially for the trip, I wanted high forward gain from mono
band 15 & 20m Yagi's. I enlisted the help of our third team member M1DCV Marti, he likes the challenge of
building his own equipment and he seemed to have some great ideas and agreed to take on this very important
job for me. After some discussion about where we would get the aluminium from we visited a company that
Marti had bought some metal from before, Coventry's Metal & Plastic Shop. There we found Stu, full of
enthusiasm and interested in our assignment and promptly gave us some samples to play with and telephoned
around all his suppliers to get us the lightweight aluminium tubing that we needed.
I went away to discuss with some shipping companies how to get the boxes of antennas and masts out to
Rarotonga Island in advance of our departure. I called several shipping companies with my enquiry for
quotes to see who were the most helpful, reliable and trustworthy company to deal with. Well one company
was Cargobooker's in London, now this afternoon when I received their e-mail I nearly fell off my chair
laughing. I know that the Cook Islands are not your everyday destination for shipping goods, and most people
say "where is that" but the quote came back for routing the goods by ROAD to Cork Ireland!! Needless to
say I didn't follow up their quote.
The more I seemed to get involved with this trip the more expensive it was turning out to be.
My laptop was really on its last bytes after travelling around the world about 10 times, over
recent years, so I decided to invest in a new Pentium 4 lap top, although I got a good deal it was £735
GBP and my wallet was starting to groan. Especially one day when I was surfing the web and stumbled
(unintentionally of course) on a digital camera warehouse. So I snapped up a Fuji S7000 Finepix Digi
Cam for £445 GBP. That was really the reason I needed the laptop to download the images onto as my old one
did not have a CD Writer.
30th July 04 - A few weeks ago I sent an e-mail to the managing director or Royal Mail who I work for
asking for sponsorship for the expedition. Today I received a phone call from Royal Mail International
saying that they were looking into the logistics of sending our freight to the Cook Islands free gratis,
bingo!!!
M1DCV Marti and ZK1SDE Tim at the Pacel Force Depot as the antennas and masts are sent on the long journey to ZK1.
September 2004 - This month I am pleased to announce and welcome new members to the team SM6WET Magnus
Aronsson and his girlfriend Anki, also SM6XMY Tomas Hansson and his girlfriend Pirjo. Magnus and Tomas
are friends from several years and I am looking forward to joining up with the Swedish Team as travel
and expedition partners.
Mid October 2004, Now over to Marti M1DCV for the next part of the story……
17 & 20m Mono Band Antennas (ZK1SDE Cook Islands 2005)
At some point in 2004 my good friend Tim M3SDE
approached me and asked if I would be interested in constructing the 4 mono band antennas for his trip to
the Cook Islands, and without fully understanding what this entailed I accepted the challenge, thinking
that I had about 6 or 7 months to get this job done seemed more than enough time to allow for locating
suppliers and designing the 2 antennas, unknown to me at the time was the fact we only had a 2 month time
slot to get the antennas on the plane so they could start there trip to the Cooks.
M1DCV Marti starts the antenna construction.
I must admit at first I thought he was having a joke with me, pulling my leg, but not so, he was totally
serious and to make things just a little more fun he then continued to explain what he needed the antennas
to do and what compromises could be made and which ones could not. The antennas had to be strong but light,
but also had to retain a good forward gain whilst retaining a fair F/B of about 18dB, well if you have ever
constructed anything like this you will know how hard it is to find good, lightweight aluminium and even harder
to find tapered or telescoping sections suitable for antenna construction. As luck would have it I had made
a good friend a while ago at a metal supplies wholesalers who without I don't think the project would of even
made it off the drawing board. All of the aluminium was located from various places around the country and I
started to construct the 4 mono band beams. The design was done using MMANA and QYAGI both of which are free
for amateur radio operators to use and can be found on the web without to much trouble and are both fairly
user friendly QYAGI being the simplest .The design we ended up using has given us good band width of more
than 150khz on 17m with an swr 0f 1.4:1 and interestingly only an SWR reading of about 2.8:1 on 15m while
still resonant on the band it was made for which is 17m. Forward gain was quite good at 8.6dB with a 23dB
F/B ratio and a total beam weight of only 7kg for the 15m, and forward gain of 8.2dB with a F/B ratio of
18.5dB and an all up weight of just under 10kg for the 20m beam. So with two months work now behind me of
construction design and testing the project goal has been achieved and all 4 antennas are ready to be flown
and shipped to there final destination's.
M1DCV Marti with the home built 17m 3 element Yagi for the ZK1 Team.
Good luck out there lads… M1DCV Marti
Well thanks do not seem enough for the work that Marti has done for this expedition,
I can only say that it is really appreciated.
20 October 2004 - We now have 15 parcels weighing in at a total of 157Kgs, containing, antennas, masts,
brackets and cables, dispatched to the Cook Islands and I have spoken to Glenn Hodson who is working for
us at Parcel Force World Wide. This morning he confirmed that he had negotiated transit with Air New Zealand
also helping out in the sponsorship.
18 November 2004 - I have news that our cargo has now reached Rarotonga and will now be shipped to the final
destination by boat.
Financial Report
| Air New Zealand flight LHR to Rarotonga 6 people |
£5,465
|
| Flights Raro - Aitutaki Island x 6 |
£758
|
| Flights from Raro - Manihiki x 2 |
£995
|
| Antennas |
£200
|
| Equipment transport (Sponsored by Royal Mail Parcel
Force Worldwide) |
£1,000
|
| Accommodation at Aitutaki Island 6 people |
£1,641
|
| Accommodation at Manihiki Atoll |
£300
|
| Food & Drink |
|
| Generator Rental |
|
| Laptop PC |
£735
|
| Digital Camera |
£445.93
|
| Website Hosting & Services Sponsored by
www.inkinkink.net |
N / A
|
| QSL Printing |
|
| Postage of QSL cards |
|
|
|
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