News of today that in 2017, the present scientific research base on the Macquarie island will definitively dismantled.
It’s a bad news for all DXer’s, because almost all of last activities radio from VK0/M, took place inside the base and the operators were researchers or technicians with Ham radio licence. Now we’ll miss this opportunity.
Moreover, the island wasn’t activated by a real dxpedition from many years, on the contrary really big operations never were done from Macquarie. Just various radio operations by whom were on duty for sometime in the base. Meaning small activities, even with simple set up that however gave the ATNO to many of us. Anyway I guess that very few dxer’s can claim VK0/M confirmed on different bands/modes.
With the dismantlement of the base this possibility will disappear and it wouldn’t be a big surprise for me if the rules access to the island will become more difficult. By the way the Macquarie Island is already a protected Natural Reserve and patrimony of UNESCO. This will be complicating all possible future dxpeditions, that would be anyway really expensive
to get there, as is in all very isolated DX entities, lacking of any form of human presence.
Last activity from the island was VK0TH between 2011 and 2012, around 14.000 qso’s in the log, previously operation, VK0KEV. Now it’s really hard, and it will be more and more…
by Enrico IZ5CML
(traslation Fabrizio IN3ZNR)
