KH3 – JOHNSTON ISLAND [THE LICENSE!!!]

[UPDATE]: We publish exclusively the copy of the license issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to Susan W7KFI:

Susan W7KFI, has unexpectedly received permission from ‘U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)‘ to land on Johnston Island.
Susan is expected to sail to Johnston about mid January and be active from KH3 for a week, starting approximately on 21st January.

Susan is a 76 years old lady who likes to sail solo aboard her boat “USSV DHARMA.” Contrary to what her age might suggest, Susan is an expert on the latest technologies from the world of radio. Not limited to amateur radio traffic, she regularly uses Pactor3 to receive e-mails with current weather, knows how to keep in touch with the network of the Coast Guard and participates daily in the Pacific Radio Net on 40 meters (7088 LSB)for help with navigation.

For more information about her adventures, refer to her personal site: http://w7kfi.com.

She is now in Honolulu, Hawaii. Amazingly she got permission to land at Johnston Island, which last year was ranked the 24th most wanted DXCC entity. Johnston is an atoll on which the U.S. Air Force had a military base. The base was operational from 1944 to 2003, the year in which it was entirely dismantled, and today it looks like a barren island where obvious signs of human presence remains, but now everything is destroyed. For more historical notes refer to the website: http://www.johnstonmemories.com.

We guess she will not be easy to work from Europe and as far as her equipment is concerned, she carries an FT-847 onboard, an I-C718 and a K3! Susan stated she will operate CW and SSB, or digital modes on request. She indicates these approximate frequencies: 14036, 14236, 18090, 18146, 21036, 21286, 28036 and 28450 kHz.

Presumably, pile-ups will be very intense and the path from Europe is highly dependent on where in Europe you are; the atoll is located west-southwest of Hawaii, four days of sailing. It is in CQ Zone 31 and her signal will depend very much on the antennas used. We hope she will be able to cope with the very large pile-ups with signals coming from many directions. Central and southern Europe will certainly be the most disadvantaged.QSL via KH6CG, direct or the bureau. It is hoped that an on-line log will be available on clublog.org