8Q7YY - Rakeedhoo island - Maldives
Or how to celebrates one's wife's birthday properly 🙂
Wise men say that if you occasionally bring your wife to a warm, blue ocean, it pacifies them. Not for long, of course, but still … So, it was planned as a pacific trip to the Indian Ocean…
June 19, 2025 - an initial idea
But what is the point of traveling anywhere if you are without a Moxon, VDA, a few 1/4-wave verticals, and a small Icom, even if it is your wife’s birthday trip … 🙂
Location
As before, the final destination must meet a few criteria to be selected:
- Blue ocean with warm waters … For some reason, XYL doesn’t appreciate DXing in R1F and on her birthday, particularly 🙂 … I don’t mind R1F (but FSB minds ;-). However, we are firmly on the same page with my XYL that a lot of salty water in the vicinity of the antenna is excellent for a low-angle antenna intake… I am not sure my XYL operates in exactly the same terms, but she clearly agrees that a lot of warm salty water near the equator is good for the destination 🙂
- The location must be high enough in the DXCC most wanted list, at least, in some categories, for example, #83 in SSB or #37 in SSB on 6m, to spark sufficient interest
- At the same time, it must be within reach of a solo DXer to obtain licenses and permits between Zoom calls or other working activities. Thanks to Parker (8Q7PR) for the great help. I have the license in a few quick days
- Hotels and plane tickets must be reasonably priced
- Practical possibility to have QTH outside of cities for antennas, and hopefully not disastrous local QRN
The Maldives sounded like a nice option, meeting many of these criteria for a duo-expedition. We had traveled to the Maldives years before, but it was a diving safari, which was perfect. This time – DXing …Â
Hm… well… I must not forget that it is a birthday trip – not a DXpedition … I mustn’t forget. I mustn’t forget … But it looks like 55 kg out of 30+30 kg luggage allowance will not be bikinis or anything even close to that 🙂
Choosing a country is 1/2 work done. But within a country, a reasonable QTH must be found as well:
- Hotel owners must not be scared of 10-meter carbon masts with rope guys and a Moxon on top (and a few VDAs along the shore) and a 40-meter LMR400 feeder from our room or a 110-meter ~220V power wire buried into the sand
- There must be a place for the antennas and, hopefully, within 2-5 meters from the salty water to play with VDA antennas, for example
- And… – there must be low local QRN. It is hard to predict QRN, of course, but since the majority of my potential working directions will be north, if there are any local sources of QRN, they must be on the back of my Moxon or VDA, i.e., on the south. This means that the hotel must be on the north of the island, and the beam would be facing the ocean with no LED lamps and solar panels in front
- The smaller the island, the fewer sources of QRN … at least, in theory. However, a single nasty one in the vicinity can easily ruin all plans and calculations. I struggled but successfully overcame such local QRMs in Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Fiji. Let’s see how lucky we will be in the Maldives
Rakeedhoo – “in 2003, the island was described as the smallest of the inhabited islands in the atoll,” – looked like a nice spot to meet expectations. Is it so or not, we will know the future – not today – June 21, 2025
All estimates can be ruined was incorrect input data. For example, many owners show their property on the map quite lausily… So, you thought it was truly beachfront and on the north, but it may be 50 meters behind other buildings in a densely packed street with no space for antennas and terrible QRN. Let’s believe in good luck 😉Â
June 24, 2025
- Middle-east flights are cancelled or not cancelled… Then, maybe, cancelled, but not from all destinations and not from all airlines… FlyDubai still flies from Almaty, though, but it has been cancelled from some other destinations. Hoping for the best
- There is still a chance for bad mistakes, but it looks like FlyDubai is a jackpot for me … The 30 kg/person luggage allowance means up to 3 pieces of luggage on FlyDubai. That is great news since the biggest struggle was with the masts – they are long… Even the custom-made 80-cm sections of the 10-m carbon mast are not small – not too heavy, but long. The fiberglass is 1.24 m when collapsed. Again, just a few kilos but long. Now, I can split the heavy but compact stuff – the transceiver, cables, wires – and the long stuff – carbon mast, fiberglass mast, tripod – into different pieces of luggage and not to pay the extra fee that can skyrocket the overall bill to the longer distances and several air travel sections
- It is possible to pay extra for luggage exceeding the 159 cm (length + width + depth) limit. However, it will add 300 USD for the return ticket, and the extra benefits are not as obvious as compared with the 3-piece per person allowance, which is a great deal for this trip. I will better use the spare money for dive trips, if the time allows it 🙂
Local remote operations? ...
I love my local remote operation in Kazakhstan. The idea is to replicate it on Rakeedhoo on a smaller scale:
- To install the transceiver and its power supply, the laptop and its power supply, a remote antenna switch, and a mobile phone as an LTE hotspot, in about 110 meters from my hotel room
- Bury 110 meters of thin, light ~220V power supply wire from my hotel room directly to the “remote QTH”. Calculations show that even 1mm 2-wire cable is enough for the 100-meter supply to have a reasonably small voltage drop for a 100W output power of Icom 7300
- And then enjoy the operations almost like home
- Thus, I plan to minimize the QRN to the absolute minimum by placing the antenna as far from the QRN as possible and as close to the water as possible. After all, the VDA antennas rely on the close proximity to the conductive salt water most of all
Of course, it is still possible to lay the feeder in an old, traditional way… but maybe it is not worth the weight of the feeder and extra losses for the not-so-strong 100W of the Icom 7300. It needs to be thought through and estimated.
June 28, 2025
Testing VDA antennas in the real island conditions is a primary lure for this DXpedition. Thus, they must be built, tested, and prepared in my QTH in advance since I am leaving on a business trip in will return only in a couple of days before departing to Rakeedhoo island.
VDA Original Design
VDA Implementation
The SWR and the central frequency of the VDA was satisfactory right away. So, I left fine-tuning to the island’s location because many things can be different there: the vicinity of the salt water, the mast broken, wind, etc. Let’s pray for the best and see 🙂
Central part – 170x170x2mm aluminium.
The central box is yet without a balancing ferrite coil. But it has clamps so that it can be reused with VDA wires for other bands as well.
Take Moxon Or Not Take
Since VDA is the keyword for this DXpedition, I am thinking whether to take the 10-meter Moxon at all, because VDA, in theory, has a higher “value per kg”:
- The 10-meter carbon mast + tripod + Moxon = 3.1 + 1.5 + 1.2 = 5.8 (kg)
- Alibaba offers fiberglass poles: The price for 3 pieces of 13.4m (12 sections, 120cm closed length) is $82/pc, with a mold fee of $ 7.30 (we will add one more section from the top end). Top diameter: 17.4*15.4mm. Bottom diameter: 49.4*46.8mm. Weight = 2.6 kg. Extra elements (horizontal boom, box, wires) will add, perhaps, 1 kg extra. That means that for 3.6 kg, it is possible to have a 20-meter – not a 10-meter – 2-element antenna with a comparable gain …Â
- As an added benefit, the same pole can be refurbished with a thin top 6.2m angling rod, for example, to create a slightly shortened, yet still well-tunable, 80-meter 1/4 vertical or more comfortable 1/4-wave verticals with raised radials for the 40-meter band and all bands higher. Luring, indeed
- However, the carbon mast and Moxons are proven, while the VDAs are not
- Moxon has a very deep backside attenuation, while the VDA, presumably, less, and I struggled a lot with the local QRN in the previous DXpedition. So, maybe, that attenuation is the single most important factor
- However, the 10 meter band doesn’t seem to be well-open… so, carrying nearly 6 kg for the expense of other options for lower bands may be a significant mistake … Let’s see, let’s see 🙂