TX7W – Raivavae, Austral Islands DXpedition
April 2024
OPs: Jeff Martin – K5WE, Craig Boyer – W5CCP
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The DXpedition
Jeff – K5WE, and Craig – W5CCP will be active as TX7W from the settlement of Anatonu on the north shore of Raivavae, Austral Islands beginning 16 April through 30 April, 2024. They will operate all bands 160 through 10 meters using the CW, FT8, FT4, SSB, and RTTY modes. The Grid Square is BG66ed, IOTA # is OC-114, CQ Zone is 32, and the ITU Zone is 63. Depending upon a reliable internet connection, logs will be uploaded to Clublog daily and Clublog Livestream will be active. Logs will be uploaded to LoTW upon returning home. Periodic updates will occur on this webpage. Currently, the Austral Islands entity is number 59 world-wide and number 53 in Europe on the Clublog most wanted list…
News & Updates
Wed 17Jul2024 – Today I have uploaded the TX7W DX Story to this website. Click on the TX7W Story button in the main menu section. 73… Jeff – K5WE
Wed 10Jul2024 – All requests for bureau cards received to date have been completed, boxed up, and are ready to take to UPS today. This initial shipment of “free” bureau cards cost $176.27, not including the actual cost of the QSLs and labels… So, after today, all requests for QSL cards have been processed and cards shipped. It has been a chore! 73… Jeff – K5WE
Thur 27Jun2024 – All requests for direct QSLs received to date have been completed and mailed. I will begin working on the bureau requests… Jeff – K5WE
Tue 4Jun2024 – I received the QSL cards from the printer last Saturday, June 1st. I’ve been working on them ever since. It’s a slow manual process. At this time, there are over 4000 requests in the queue. It will take a bit of time to get them all out… Jeff – K5WE
Fri 17May2024 – I added some photos from our trip to the Photo Gallery page (Pics) on the website… Jeff – K5WE
Sat 11May2024 – QSL cards were ordered today from UX5UO Print. I should have them within about a month and will begin QSLing… Below is the front of the TX7W card. It’s a nice 4-sided folded QSL card. I’m also working on emails and hope to have an update ready soon on the Supporters page… 73 de Jeff K5WE …
Wed 8May2024 – I have completed updating the logs and have done a new upload to Clublog. I have uploaded the updated full log to lotw. This is a free full log upload, no charge to you for lotw. We are designing a nice QSL card and will place an order soon. For a paper QSL card, use Clublog OQRS, or send it direct to K5WE with SASE and/or funds for postage. Tnx again for the QSOs and your support… 73 de Jeff K5WE .
Mon 6May2024 – We made it home around midnight Friday night after an exhausting trip. I am working on the logs. It appears there may be many duplicate QSOs logged by FT8/FT4. I am working to remove those dupes and will upload a good log to clublog and lotw when the update is complete. 73 de Jeff K5WE .
Wed 1May2024 – Good afternoon from Papette, Tahiti, French Polynesia from the TX7W team, Jeff K5WE and Craig W5CCP. We left Raivavae at 9 AM local this morning. We will spend one night here in Papette, then fly home to Tulsa on United via San Francisco and Denver, arriving about 8 PM Friday evening Tulsa time…
First of all, I would like to thank all our sponsors and donors. Your support has been terrific and of great benefit to us.
The next item I want to mention is our lack of reliable internet. The wireless from the resort was unusable from our bungalows. We gave the little store across the road $50 to use their wireless connection. It was very marginable. Only one of my computers would connect. I could not do an update to the dxpedition website. We could not do Livestream. We attempted to do daily uploads to clublog. This involved copying and then uploading as many as six files from the different computers. It often took several attempts to get the files uploaded. Sometimes it took an hour or two to do the daily uploads… So, a lot of our plans regarding reporting our activities to you via internet did not happen.
We had many antenna and other issues to resolve. I will get into more detail about all that later. Our primary focus was putting QSOs in the log. Clublog shows a little more than 60K QSOs in 14 days by the two operators Jeff and Craig… The number may be slightly less than that after I review the logs and remove some dupes. Regardless, we are happy with the total…
I will do more updates to this website and write a DXpedition story after returning home and as time permits… QSL cards will be ordered and QSLing will begin as soon as we get them…
A big thank you to all the deserving DXers out there for all the QSOs. We hope we put on a good show… Hope to CU from the next one… More website text and photo updates later…
73 & Gud DX,
Jeff – K5WE and Craig – W5CCP
The TX7W Austral Islands team
Sun 14Apr2014 – In transit… Jeff – K5WE & Craig – W5CCP with a hugh load of baggage at the Papeete, Tahiti airport. We arrived Papeete this evening, will depart for Raivavae, Austral Islands tomorrow. Our excess baggage fees are more than our airfare… CU soon from TX7W… Jeff – K5WE
10Apr2024 – Final preparations are being made for the TX7W – Austral Islands DXpedition. Jeff – K5WE and Craig – W5CCP will depart Tulsa next Sunday April 14 and hope to be on the air from Raivavae sometime on April 16. Many thanks to all our sponsors, your donations are a big help. CU soon from TX7W…
25Mar2024 – The Austral Islands entity has moved up a couple notches to number 57 on the newly released Clublog most wanted list…
7Mar2024 – Press Release #2
Preparations are progressing nicely for our operation from TX7W – Austral Islands. Hardcopy license has been received. Accommodations and airline reservations have been completed and paid. Radios, amplifiers, and computers have been acquired, software configured. Gear and antennas are being tested. We plan to have 4 stations on the air when possible with a nice compliment of antennas. Austral is currently #59 on the Clublog Most Wanted List. Many thanks to our corporate, club, and individual supporters. Your donations are appreciated! CU soon from TX7W… 73 de Jeff – K5WE & Craig – W5CCP. For more info go to: https://k5we.com/tx7w/ .
14Feb2014 – Our thanks to Mark – K5YAC and the Tennadyne and Cubex Quads antenna companies for a financial contribution in support of the TX7W – Austral Islands DXpedition. We appreciate it!
13Feb2014 – Our thanks to DX Engineering for a donation of antenna hardware and accessories. We appreciate your support of the TX7W – Austral Islands DXpedition.
10Feb2024 – The developer of the VOACAP Propagation Prediction software, Jari, OH6BG, has created a dedicated propagation site for TX7W and listed us on the VOACAP DX Charts. If you click on the button, the link will open. Enter your 6 digit grid square, it will display several propagation charts based upon your location to TX7W. Very nice! Tnx Jari…
9Feb2024 – Website online. TX7W – Austral Islands DXpedition announced.