September 20th 2010 we arrived in Astana, the capital of Kasakhstan, Locator MO51QD. We plan to stay here until September 2013.

Despite the sayings of my collegues we managed to find a nice house and the garden should be big enough to build up some antennas :-)

The disadvantage is the direction to the west, where some neighbour houses will be higher than my tower.

December 7th I got my licence and will be activ as UN/DL9LBH as soon as I can get out some antennas. Rising my tower will have to wait until spring time because of the cold winter :-(   but I use this time and ordered some additional or new equipment to come back to the bands with a better station :-)

April 28th 2011 finally the truck with the ordered items arrived, this was the good news. The bad news is that the 4th 70cm antenna is missing and the splitter for 70cm is damaged. But at least I can start to build up the system.

21nd May 2011: My antennas are up and I can start to bring you UN on 2m and 70cm via the moon!

28th May 2011: I have to get down the antennas again to look for a problem on 70cm but on 2m I had my 1st contacts today from Kazakhstan, even when conditions were not good and often oneway to Europe.

20th October 2011 the truck with the missing 4th antenna for 70cm at least arrived, but ......................       instead of the ordered 23el they sent me a 13el. Nevertheless at 22nd October I got down the tower, mounted the 13el, so on 70cm now I have 3x23el +1x13el. I changed the 70cm preamp because I shot the old one but I have problems with it, it seems to produce outband signals, so I am still not qrv on 70cm, sorry about this. I also changed the splitters for both bands. As splitter I now use those from www.rfhamdesign.com and I dont have any further problems with bad swr which I had with the old ones. Also with their quadratic material they are much more stable than my old ones.

12th November 2011 the company was so kind to send the 23el now with UPS to the embassy, but despite the embassy adress and I do not have to pay any tax or other payments for incoming goods, it is blocked by the kazakh customs office in Almaty. I hope they soon will understand that this is against the rules.

16th November 2011 finally the parcel with the antenna arrived in Astana.

Friday 18th November 2011 I mounted the antenna in the 13 degree Celsius warm garage while outside we have -10 Celsius. So I hope for a weekend without wind and some more kindly temperatures to get down the tower, mount the antenna and change the 70cm preamp against a DB6NT preamp.

Sunday, 20th November 2011: Good news and bad news. Despite of -11 Celsius but sunshine and no wind, I mounted the 4th 23el Flexa Yagi for 70cm, so finally I have 4x23el for 70cm. I also changed the preamp from ssb electronic against a DB6NT preamp, because I thought the preamp would produce outband signals. But with the new preamp I have the same problem. Maybe they use here some equipment on the 70cm band and with the preamp switched on I get all this FM signals. So I doubt that I can receive properly on 70cm. At least not with the preamp switched on. Maybe with high elevation it might be better.

I got operational with my FlexRadio Flex-5000A 21st March 2012. It is a SDR radio with the 2m und 70cm band built in and I enjoy it very much. It is the best radio I ever had, with a supreme receive!

Saturday 28th April: With the help of the big signal of PI9CAM on 70cm I discovered my receive problem on this band, which I had the last weeks. My preamp is blown off and is working as a noise source only. With my Flex-5000A I already worked stations, even under bad conditions, which I could not hear before, a very fine radio!

4th July 2012 I was informed that I might have to go back to DL already this year instead of late 2013. If the final decision is made I will have to get down my antennas very quickly. So If you dont have worked me already, try to work me already this month please.

16th September 2012: still no decision, so I have to turn down mast and vhf/uhf antennas in early October, because I can not do it from November to April because of strong winter wheather here. Nevertheless today I had my probably last contact via moon from here because my BEKO Pa broke again and this time it seems to be a more severe problem and not only the soldering at one transistor because soldering did not solve the problem and it looks like a relais seems to hang. So for the rest of my time here I will hang around a little bit on shortwave. 73 to the eme family and thanks for a lot of fun via the moon from UN.

10th october I was informed that I have to go back early, maybe already in december. I still do not know where and when, which I need to know for any preparations. I did not expect that some decisions might be influenced by some people in this way without any further control. So I used the last good days with sun and without wind at the weekend to get my antennas down.

Sorry - UN/DL9LBH is QRT now. Thank you for the fun and the om from Kazakhstan for their friendship! I will miss them. 

 worked via EME:

2m:

44 countries

159 squares

238 initials

70cm:

7 countries

14 squares

16 initials

Hans-Walter Orths

Karaotkel-2, No 85

010000 Astana

Kasakhstan