FT5ZM Amsterdam Island DXpedition Starting

[N1API]

K0IR the Team Leader announced that they will start to tear down the Operation Feb. 12, 2014. So if you have not worked Amsterdam Island you have about a week to do so.

Try 10 meters in the early morning they start to show about 7:00 to 7:30 AM and are usually gone on 10 by about 10 AM. 12 meter opens a little later but stays strong until late morning. Sometime more. It seems to be one of the better bands. 15 is unpredictable. It can be open most anytime during the day but it's one of the weaker signals. 17 meters is one of their best band. It opens late morning with a weak signal but builds and signals are 59 + once it opens up and stays loud into the evening sometime later. 20 meters seems to be open most of the day, (but I've got to admit since I've had that band done before I have not paid much attention to it.). But it seems like the cluster is always reporting strong signals most of the day and evening on 20. I can't give much info on 30, 40 and 80 since I don't use those.

They have only done two log uploads to Club Log. The log is "complete" up to 13:07:16 on Feb. 1st. They show 89,683 calls in the log with 23,200 unique calls. That ratio seems one sided so it looks like the "big guns" are still trying to fill their band and mode slots, maybe trying to make the Leaderboard. When you see that ratio start to change then that means that they are starting to pick up the stations that are just trying for one band and one mode for just the country.

Good luck if you still need it.

-73-