DXCC 323 : Prince Edward & Marion Islands

Once again, a rather unexpected last-minute expedition to a rare DXCC. 

And once again, the wrong antennas were in the air. 

This time, ZS8W was active on 10 meters—a piece of cake to work with the Optibeam, if only it hadn’t been lying on the ground while the SteppIR was up in the air. In the end, I still managed to make the contact in FT8. LoTW confirmed and QSL received. 20 DXCC to go.

Then a pleasant surprise: I worked them on 30 meters using the G5RV wire antenna. Although this band isn’t ideally suited for the G5RV, I was able to tune it with the new TunerGenius. To my amazement, he came back to my call immediately. Upon further investigation, it turns out there’s a very interesting radiation pattern on 30 meters, which happened to be perfect for the southern direction. And once again it proves: a seemingly poor antenna works a hundred times better than no antenna at all.

30m pattern on normal G5RV