The bumpy road working Crozet Islands

 For those that don't know were the Crozet Islands are located, it is a group of 6 sub antarctic islands roughly located between Madagascar and the Antarctic. Is is a nature reserve and of course there are no residentials. The chance to work a HAMradio operator from there is almost impossible till some researcher or tourist with license is stationed on the island. This only happens once in several decades. Currently this DXCC (HAMradio approved country) is nr. 2 on the most wanted list. At this moment Thierry F6CUK, an experienced HAMradio operator, is on the Island Possession for 3 months as FT8WW. Working him as small station is now starting to be possible as most of the "big guns" have been working him the last couple of weeks.

One of my neighbourstations PA4O reported about 2 weeks ago that he worked FT8WW. But unfortunately he didn't show up in the log. Seems to be someone wanted to be funny and pretended to be FT8WW, something that's called pirating and is easy to do in digimode. Pirating seems to be very common these days, although I can't imagine the fun of it?

Well, I started to try contacting FT8WW last week. Actually every day of the week I tried and called with no luck, too many were calling Thierry. Yes, even with a digimode like FT8 this is very, very hard. Several layers of callers on just a slice of about 2800Hz. You need to be very lucky to make the contact. And although Thierry writes he will be on the island for 3 months, the HF license is only valid 3 weeks till the 26th of January. Besides that the weather on the island is very rough and he already lost a few antennas due to very high winds. So it is important to get at least one QSO in the log to confirm this very important new one.

So, I saw FT8WW here last evening, actually too late. Signals were barely readable, sometimes not. In the mean time I had a chat via messenger with PB7Z Bernard who was watching the frequency as well. Unfortenutaly it was even worse at his side, probabely because he was using a vertical which picks up too much noise. I decided to call below Thierry's frequency.

Suddenly he came back to me. But no RR73 was received. However, this station works with 2 streams out of MSHV and it could be that my RR73 was on the stream I didn't see. Not shure about this I decided I should try again. The signal lifted a bit and PB7Z decided to try a few calls as well. Bernard has a bit more power as me but receive is worse unfortunately. But he was lucky somehow, FT8WW came back to him.

But Bernard didn't see him anymore. So I quickly decided to be his remote RX station and directed him via the chat to TX RR73. Because he didn't see it I send him the screenshot from what I received. A moment later the QSO was made:

If you think why you don't see PB7Z's signal, I was calling at that timeslot and unable to see him. Anyway, this was one of the most unusual ways to make a QSO with a remote RX via messenger chat. I doubt anyone has done this before. And of course the die hard DXers will say this is not valid because Bernard could not see FT8WW. But these days there are more DXers that make use of remote webSDRs to receive the DX, they don't tell because they are afraid of the discussion that could follow. Essentially what we did is just the same as remote RX via another receiving station like a webSDR.

Back to my own efforts. I did manage to get a reply second time. But look at the small "*" sign at the end of the decode. They are probabely false decodes.

And again no RR73. I decided to wait a little till signals would improve. At that moment I struggled to see any signal at all...I actually told Bernard I would try another time although he told me I was probabely in the log, I didn't believe him.

I got a reply for the third time and again no RR73. Also again probabely a false decode (that's what the "*" at the end of the decode tells us). Although I was unable to see the second stream again. Time to go for a sleep and see if I'm in the log next day. I signed off with Bernard on the chat.

Today I checked FT8WW's online log: 

To find out that I am in the log, hurray! One of these contacts made it. Probabely the first one since that was a real decode for shure. To be shure I will put all 3 QSOs in the log.

Yes, it was a bumpy road for shure. But finally worked this very rare DX (at least right now) and my first All Time New One in 2023.