Holyland DX Group Web Site

For long time we are looking for attractive sites that will be of interest to the worldwide radio ham’s.

 After operating from Masada and Akhziv Island (AS-100 several times) we decided to operate from the lowest dry point on the globe. The lowest point is positioned in the dead sea factory and is (-)411M below sea level.
In order to make it more attractive we decided to operate from two rare squares on the Jordan border as well for the Holy land award program.

We forwarded our needs to the Dead Sea factory management in order to get rooms for the operation, antenna fields and accommodation facility.
One month before the operation we visited the site to find the suitable location. The factory is very noisy with very high voltage lines and huge transformers for their production line.

We decided to use the call sign 4X411A that describes the lowest point and also this call will be an attractive prefix for the prefix hunters.
We decided to make it in Christmas time frame – the weekend of Dec. 23-24 2006,
That is clean from major contests and also most of the hams will be at their homes.

We announced one month in advance the details of the operation in all the DX clusters in order to maximize the number of contacts.

The holy land DX group (HDXG) that made the previous expeditions included :
Mark 4Z4KX, Ilya 4Z1UF, Shalom 4Z4BS, Ruslan 4Z5LA, Rueben 4Z5FI
And myself.
This outstanding team is excellent CW operators .  In poor conditions CW is the main mode to be used, mainly on the low bands.

Friday morning Dec 23 the HDXG met at the Dead Sea factory gate  . 
We received some guides on security and safety and started immediately the installation of the RIG’s and antennas. The list of the main equipment:
- IC746/IC728/IC706
- A3S tribander on a 12M telescopic tower.
- R5 vertical
- 80m dipole (worked on 30m as well)
- 2 portable computers connected together as a network for logging.

On 0800 UTC we came on the air .  conditions were extremely poor.
We divided the group to shifts and started to run the pile-ups. we found out that feeding the CW operators with vodka and whisky improved dramatically the speed rate of the QSO’s……………...
                                                                                                                                                                    

The weather was great. Partly cloudy with 15C during the two days of operation.
We faced one problem with the linear amplifier that could not be used due to a power supply problem. So we were obliged to work only with 100w that caused a bigger challenge to the operators. (To run 100w on 40/80 is not easy………).

The holy land square of the fix station was L26BS. This square was also required by many holy land square hunters. On the second day of operation we went out to the Jordan border to run mobile the two rare squares as mentioned before. We used the call 4X411A/M. We had only three hours limit to operate from both squares. We had
Nearby an armed person from the dead sea works to secure the mobile operation.
We had a huge pile up.  we worked 400 hams in 3 hours !

We were obliged to go by numbers. One operator was talking while the other one was
Logging by hand the QSO’s.
The signal that “went out” from the mobile spot was amazing. 20-40DB over “s” 9. We were surrounded with very salty pools that behaved like a mirror.

We returned to the fix station afternoon and continued the activity till 1400 UTC.   We closed down and removed the antennas quickly after completing 2500 QSO’s.
1373 in CW and the balance on SSB. Again the CW is the big winner.

I would like to that Aron 4X1FQ who helped us to get the authorization and the entire HDXG group for the two great days.

QSL via: Shalom 4Z4BS

73!
Jan 4X1VF