Since this month’s DX column features the 3Y0J DXpedition to Bouvet, we thought it might be instructive to look back at an earlier expedition to the same chunk of rock in the South Atlantic Ocean, the3Y5XoperationinDecember1989andJanuary1990. If you change the dates and the call sign, VP2ML’s April 1990 commentary could apply equally well today. Technology has changed greatly in the past three decades, but Mother Nature and human nature have not. When it comes to Bouvet, it seems, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
DX
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Bouvet
The 3Y5X Bouvet operation by Club Bouvet is over, thank goodness. The team arrived at Bouvet on schedule on Christmas day, but was unable to land on Bouvet for several days, as high winds and waves eliminated a boat landing and heavy fog grounded the helicopter. The operators finally set up their first station on December 28. What followed was one of the sorriest stories of DX.
The 3Y5X signal on 14145 kHz was strong, as the team enjoyed some of the best propagation they would get for the next two weeks. The pile-up grew quickly, and very soon matters got completely out of hand.
A major operation from an extremely rare country brings everyone out of the woodwork—experienced DXers and newcomers; operators highly proficient in split-frequency operation and DXers who don’t know on which VFO they are transmitting; well-meaning, self-appointed DX “policemen”; and dozens of the most ill-spirited individuals (I won’t call them DXers) this writer has heard in 20 years of radio.
One can forgive the occasional, inadvertent transmission on 14145 kHz. In the excitement of an all-time new one, some DXers aren’t sufficiently careful to completely eliminate transmitting on the wrong VFO. One might think that
