[W5SFA] Greetings from Kwajalein!

Sat Nov 1 18:37:59 CDT 2025

John, 

Thanks for the note – I will try to work you on FT8 once I get my 40m antenna back up.  Must be fun to be the sought-after DX!  Hope you get back in time for the club’s annual luncheon on Saturday afternoon on January 10.  We’ll get it posted on the reflector once it’s all arranged.  

73,

Roger N5RWK

From: w5sfa [mailto:w5sfa-bounces at w5sfa.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Dietz via w5sfa
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2025 7:06 PM
To: Mail List for the W5SFA Radio Club; tdxs
Cc: Chuck Dietz
Subject: Re: [W5SFA] Greetings from Kwajalein!

I’m so glad you were finally able to get on the air out there, John. I still don’t have a good antenna up, but maybe someone else can work you from Austin County. 

Looking forward to seeing you when you get back. 

Chuck W5PR 

On Fri, Oct 31, 2025 at 5:28 PM John Wiley via w5sfa <w5sfa at w5sfa.org> wrote:

Yokwe aolep! (Hello everybody!):

Greetings from beautiful (but primitive) Kwajalein Island, Kwajalein Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), and thanks to Roger Klein for the email.

I've been on island since January, but it tooks months of work to obtain my reciprocal license from the RMI government's Ministry of Transportation, Communications, and Information located on Majuro Island, Majuro Atoll.  During that time, I had to source the materials and equipment to build a basic station here.

With that license issued (V73JW) and with considerable assistance from Chuck Dietz (W5PR) in Bellville, I went on-air in July - only to find that, given our geographical location (RJ39) and the necessarily primitive setup here, EVERYTHING here is DX and the only stable/reliable/useable mode is FT-8 (deep decode), and, occasionally, CW - but you've got to be quick due to the way the bands open briefly and slam shut... no time to rag-chew!

So, that's how I set up: FT-8 to knock out as many QSO's world-wide as I could with the time I had left on-island.  Who knows when the next OP will show up here to fill the demand of this relatively rare DX location.

A little about my station:  I sourced a Kenwood TS-450S from a Silent Key's estate sale.  Old, yes, but in great condition (and an even better price) and sent that over to Chuck for a once over while I gathered up the other stuff I would need: an MFJ-969 Deluxe roller inductor tuner, a K1EL WinKey mini, a TigerTronics SignaLink USB, an MFJ-347 Dipole pipemount (to interface the tuner to the random-wire), and 60+ feet of silicone coated 18 AWG copper braid terminated to a coconut tree outside my barracks window on the 3d floor.

Keeping in mind that it takes weeks, even months, for stuff to get here, my station equipment was in the pipeline and my circa 1970's Vibroplex Deluxe keyer was getting refurbished at Vibroplex in Knoxville, I had time to wrestle with the RMI government to get the V73 callsign issued.  As I said, Kwajalein - beautiful but primitive.  Things here happen in "Island Time", that is, it happens when it happens... and it did, eventually:  all my stuff (and the license) got here in July.  Add some time, elbow grease, a dash of frustrations with a whole lot of re-learning to adapt and overcome, I landed my first QSO's around mid-July.

Since going live, V73JW has logged over 2k QSO's to LoTW and issued almost as many QSL cards via eQSL and by mail, including several DXpeditions, POTA's, and Texas - but none from Austin County, so I've recently embarked on building a Raspberry Pi communications server.  Once that is complete, I hope to be able to get into the W5SFA repeater somehow and get some QSL cards flowing your way.  This is going to take some creativity and some help from some of the club members, because (and correct me if I'm wrong) the repeater is NOT EchoLink-enabled, so that leaves... some pathway I'll need to figure out... once all the parts arrive :-)

In the meantime, for anyone in the club who is an HF enthusiast and is set up for it please do try to reach me: on 40m FT-8, that's 7.074 mHz and, using WSJT-X, I'm usually listening between 1492 - 2025 on the waterfall.  Keeping in mind that I'm a day ahead of y'all (UTC +12), I'm usually on the air, if I'm not on mission, out on a ship, or doing inspections, on 40m between 0600 and 1000 UTC on week days and on the weekends the following:  40m 1700 - 2100 UTC, 12m 0000 - 0400 UTC, and 40m again from 0600 - 1000 or until I fall asleep at the key!

If you have a Yagi/Log Periodic/or a variable direction dipole, your best shot out this was is: short-path azimuth (best): ~281° (WNW) or Long-path azimuth (backup/rare): ~101° (ESE).

The other HF bands aren't very successful out this way, so I've had limited contacts on them, same with CW.  However, if any of you want to schedule a QSO, just let me know and I'll try to accommodate you if the bands will cooperate.

Thanks again to Roger and Chuck.  I look forward to rotating back to Texas either just before Christmas or shortly after New Years day (depending on which plane comes thru) and meeting you all when I get back.  If anybody has any questions, please feel free to contact me here:  john.wileyf1 at gmail.com which is my email and my WhatsApp.

Kommol elap & 73's,

John F. Wiley, CDS SMS CSHP

Safety Engineer

LOGCAP-V USINDOPACOM

V2X, Inc.

V73JW / K5GDE

V73JW.jpg
John Station.jpg

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