The Ohio/Penn Dx PacketCluster
DX Special Bulletin No. 1437.1
BID: $OPDX.1437.1
October 28, 2019
Editor Tedd Mirgliotta, KB8NW
Provided by BARF80.ORG (Cleveland, Ohio)
Written/Sent from Strongsville, Ohio

Thanks to the Northern Ohio Amateur Radio Society, Northern Ohio DX
Association, Ohio/Penn PacketCluster Network, the AB5K's AR Clusters
Network and W0GJ for the following DX information.

VP6R Pitcairn Island DXpedition Press Release (28th October)[edited].
VP6R Press Release 28 October 2019
 We just finished working in the CQWW SSB Contest and made about 8500
SSB contacts on 160-10M. We had a lot of fun giving out a rare multiplier!
Several worked us on all six bands. The VP6R team wants to thank everyone
for working us during the contest. We hope you had as much fun as we did
despite the challenging propagation conditions. We will now resume our
regular DXpedition operations.
 We now almost 60,000 contacts in Club Log with 4-5 full days of operation
left.
 We have had reports of several FT8 contacts not being uploaded to Club
Log. We carefully documented a long session of FT8 and noted the stations
that did not show up in ?Fox.log? window, the log that FT8 creates in the
Fox/Hound mode. We found about 1-2 ?missing? contacts per hour. There is
another text file that FT8 creates while running AND WE FOUND THE MISSING
CONTACTS. One of our team members has written a program to extract them
and add them to log database. The FT8 development team is now aware of
this issue and this will be addressed in future releases. Summary: IF you
have seen us send ?YOURCALL RR73?, you can rest assured you ARE in the log
and your contact WILL be uploaded to Club Log. Give us some time after we
go QRT to extract and add the missing contacts to our logs.
 We will have one more night on 60M this date (Oct 28) starting at about
0400Z. We will be on 5.357 MHz with FT8 F/H mode.
 We will NOT have any RTTY operation on this DXpedition. We will continue
to operate FT8 until we go QRT.
 We have had several days of torrential rain with high winds. Some wind
gusts were recorded over 100 mph. We have had damaged antennas, which,
fortunately, have all been relatively easy to fix. The weather is starting
to improve, but we are also near the beginning of the rainy season. Today
we have had sunshine, then downpours, then sunshine. Repeat every 5 minutes.
We can attest to the fact that Pitcairn boasts of ?the world?s friendliest
mud.?
 We have two operation sites. The remote old Radio Site where all of the
low band operation has taken place, will be dismantled after local sunrise
on October 31. The next morning, November 1, we will be totally QRT and
dismantle everything at our base location. Everything must be packed and
stored. Some of the equipment we have used needs to be loaded onto the
Braveheart for the South Orkney DXpedition. We depart Sunday, November 3,
on the Braveheart.