Niue is a small island northeast of New Zealand in the South Pacific Ocean.

A group of seven hams from the UK are operating there as E6GG thru September 29th. While not the rarest of DX, it is #97 on the Club Log most wanted list.

Give them a try around local sunrise their time, between the hours of 1700-1900 UTC on 15 meters.  They have been hanging out around 21.003 and listening up about 1. Other bands like 20, 17 and 12 have been fruitful in the RI area.  Expect signals to be S1 to S3.

These guys are GREAT operators, really digging out weak signals, and doing their best to upload logs to Club Log and LotW frequently.

K1N, Navassa Island, is the #2 most wanted DX entity.  That need will be satisfied over the week or so as they are now on the air.  Propagation into the New England states is fantastic, with S9 signals on multiple bands during the daylight, and one or two bands 24×7.  That’s the good news.  The not so good news is that the pileups are fierce.  30-Meter pileups have filled almost the entire band, and 70+ KHz pileups on the SSB bands is not uncommon.  Still its worth the effort to snag this rare DX.

Information on Navassa, including some excellent photographs, can be found here.

On the first DXpedition to Iran in several decades, EP6T went on the air January 17th and will be on for three more days (ending Jan 26).  It was immediately met by total bedlam.  While the pileups were better maintained that the Tromelin DXpedition, the amount of intentional QRM had to be heard to be believed.  As of today, they have managed to work about 45,000 stations, and fewer than 5,000 of them have been with the US.

Willy, W1LY, was one of those lucky few US hams to make it through the mess and get a confirmed contact on 40 Meter SSB.

Congratulations Willy!

Edited to add that since the above post the following NCRC members have also worked EP6T:  Jim, K1SD, and Bob, WB4SON

(According to the ARRL, with a population of 80 million, only 13 hams are licensed in Iran.)

Bryce Anderson, K7UA, has recently revised his handbook for new DXers and given permission for it to be republished.  It is a pretty interesting read, and you can obtain a copy by clicking this link:  “New DXers Handbook”