ZS8W Marion Island By YL2GM.
According to DXNews.com, “Yuris, YL2GM will be active as ZS8W from Marion Island, Prince Edward Islands, IOTA AF – 021, 21 April – 16 May 2025. He will operate on 160 – 6m, CW, SSB, Digital modes.”
Normally I’d be excited at the chance to work ZS8W but there’s a couple items that have tempered my enthusiasm on this specific activation.
First of all Yuris/YL2GM doesn’t work much CW and he barely works SSB, if at all. This DXpedition has all the signs of being just another lazy computer scripted text messaging activation. Secondly he’s a solo DXpeditioner. There’s no “team” here – it’s a one man operation.
Here’s data I pulled from a few of YL2GM’s latest DXpeditions. The percentages:
ZD9W: 11% CW, 4% Phone & 85% FT8
K8K: 4% CW, 0% Phone, 96% FT8
VK9LA: 2.5% CW, 0% Phone, 97.5% FT8
VK9CY: 26% CW, 0% Phone, 74% FT8
VU7W: 10% CW, 1% Phone, 88% FT8
I seriously doubt much will change with his upcoming Marion Island activation as ZS8W. My guess they’ll be a little CW, almost no SSB and over 85 to 90% lazy computer scripted text messaging. Anybody that thinks different would you like to place a bet (or two)?
For all the real Ham Radio Operators left in the hobby we’ll have to take our chances his computer will lock up and become useless forcing him into actually communicate via the “human modes”. For the lesser non-communicating Text Messengers best hope his computer virus software is up-to-date so you can pretend you (and not your computer) actually worked Marion Island.
On the off-chance there’s a CW or SSB pile-up I hope to see you real Hams in the mix!
N0UN
Amen brother. N4KS