The FIRST Peter One DXpedition, 1987

Peter I Island was discovered on January 10, 1821 by the Russian sea Captain von Bellingshausen, who approached within 15 miles of its shores and named the island after the czar.

The first Norwegian expedition to Peter I Island was by SS Odd I in January 1927. They were searching for new waters for whaling, rumours were that there should be a lot of whales in the ocean around this desolate and unknown island.

They reached Peter I 17 January 1927, and circumnavigated the island to find a suitable place for landing. Their boat was launched with two men, however the shore was too steep and the swell to heavy for landing. As the weather worsened, they had to abandon the landing attempt.

They took a lot of photos of the island and named the highest peak, at an estimated 4000 ft asl, after their shipowner, Mr. Lars Christensen.

A new expedition was launched in 1929 when SS Norvegia sailed from the South Atlantic to explore the South Pacific waters. Again the expedition was financed by mM. Lars Christensen, Sandefjord.

They reached the island 2 February 1929 and managed with some effort to get ashore. Captain Larsen of Norvegia, planting the Norwegian flag, claimed the island for Norway.

But both Bouvetöya and Peter I had been in the dreams and plans (by men and mice) among Norwegian hams for many years.

It was not until LA1EE, Einar Enderud, in the summer of 1986, saw a possible transport, the ship MV Aurora, in the harbour of Oslo, that the dreams should materialise.

The ship belonged to the Norwegian scientist Ms. Monica Christensen (not related to Mr. Lars Christensen). She should ski from the Bay of Whales to the South Pole and back.

MV Aurora was her expedition ship, and the ship should wait in the Antarctic waters while she was venturing for the South Pole.

LA1EE figured that the waiting time could be used for an expedition to Peter I öy, which had not been visited by Norwegians since the MV Brattegg expedition in 1948. Together with LA2GV, Kċre Pedersen, they launched the idea with LA-DX-GROUP, who decided to establish an expedition project.

Einar also got the Norwegian Polar Research Institute (NPI) interested, actually the main element in the plan, organising a private project was out of economical reach.

The expenditure by the planned amateur operation would still be far behind anything ventured by Norwegian hams. A lot of hams were asked to personally guarantee up to $1,000 USD each. Although most declined, headshaking, the total commitment still made a good starting point for negotiations with DX foundations and commercial and private sponsors.

Northern California DX Foundation committed $30.000 USD on the condition that ARRL would accept Peter I as a new country for DXCC and that at certain number of QSO's were made.

The contact person at NCDXF, W6DU, Eric Edberg, established contact with Bob Ferrero W6RJ and Ham Radio Outlet. That secured part of the equipment need.

JA1BK, Kan Mizoguchi, and his commercial contacts in Japan also committed equipment and money. And numerous contributions were made by other hams and organisations. The project was afloat on the ham side!

The project reached an agreement with the NPI on 22 December 1986, with departure date from Lyttleton, New Zealand set to10 January 1987. The Xmas became a very hectic period, with assembly and testing of various equipment. Tents, transceivers and generators were tested in real winter condition; we had a cold and white Xmas in Oslo! The specially designed tilt-over antenna masts were welded on Xmas day!

The expedition team, five scientists from NPI and two hams, with equipment, arrived in Lyttleton, for rendezvous with MV Aurora, as planned. Equipment arriving from Japan and USA had been taken care of by ZL3GQ and other ZL-hams. By special permission they were allowed into the customs bonded store to pre-assemble antennas and check other equipment!

Aurora left port 10 January as planned for a 3100 Nm sailing to Peter I öy, a journey planned to take some 13 days.

En route, major concern was ice-conditions. Words said that Bob, KD7P, had been in the area with the USCG Glacier icebreaker, unable to reach Peter I because of heavy ice. How could MV Aurora manage to reach the island when USCG could not?

At 22 January they reached the island, experiencing only light ice, and clear weather. The helicopter is readied for a recon flight, and they landed on what later would be named Radiosletta (Radio Plains), near Evas odde (Cape Eva). The Argentine cabin was not to be seen, but they found the area very suitable for a camp.

The island is covered by snow and ice, leaving only steep and narrow shores free of ice, at some places. Other places the island ice-sheet falls directly into the sea.

They felt confident, and decided to establish camp. The equipment was brought ashore by the helicopter, and during the night the camp was finished.

Einar and Kċre should stay on the island the whole period; the NPI team leader estimated they would get a maximum 10 days.

The scientists should stay on the ship and fly in for each days work. Actually much of their work was mapping the island by aerial photography, they were in the air all day, weather permitting.

23 January they were ready to QRV. Holding Norwegian callsigns, they just switched prefix from LA to 3Y, and 3Y1EE and 3Y2GV were on the air. A NEW ONE was borne; country no. 317 was on the air! Needless to say, the ham-bands came to life.

Working with two stations, with a distance of some 100 m between the antennas, they could even be on the same band without interfering each other. They always had one station on the air, did they ever sleep?

When shutting down on 2 February, a total of some 17000 QSO's were made, 1/3 on CW, 2/3 on SSB, and a mere 48 QSO's on RTTY.

Weather was rapidly changing between bright sunshine and heavy fog, rain and blizzard like conditions. A storm took its toll on the antenna farm; one of the tri-banders ended up like a crossed yagi. The generators also had their problems, getting choked by the light snow.

However that did not bring the operators out of tune. They steadfastly manned their stations, and re-fueled generators as required. During their stay, they only had a couple of trips to the ship to shower.

On 2 February, the camp was broken, and everybody was back on the ship. Both operators and LA-DX-GROUP support team was extremely satisfied by success of this expedition.

The return leg was to Punta Arenas in Chile, and then eventually back to Norway.

A team of about 15 persons were ready to start the next job; the QSL service. Mind you, this was all manual logs, it could take some thorough studies to sort out wee-hours handwriting!

Summing up the books, we found the figures to be so good that part of the contribution by NCDXF was paid back; there could come an other project.

For LA hams the obvious answer to the question "Where to go next" was Bouvet, but that is an other story.