Bangladesh – March 29, 2026 by Team S21WD
S21WD — Field update
We just passed 50,000 QSOs — a big milestone for the team — and spirits are high as we press on. RTTY operation is coming up as soon as possible to give yet another mode to chase S21WD.
Sun activity is still causing problems for daytime operation — recent solar flares haven’t helped — but we continue to enjoy very good North America openings during our sunrise and sunset runs across all high bands, and we’ve received lots of positive reports from stations worked. Good openings to Japan and Europe are rarer but do occur; the high bands are on fire and producing awesome rates for the team — we hope this continues so we can add even more QSOs to the log.
One amplifier has been brought back to life and is now producing full output — we’re very grateful for the support of everyone involved in getting it running. We are entering WPX SSB as a Multi/Single; QSO rates are lower than we’d hoped, but we are staying active throughout the contest period. The WPX contest log will be published after the log‑deadline has passed — both on Clublog and via LoTW.
Low bands are proving challenging. Heavy QSB on all low bands often makes two‑way copy difficult; we are making efforts to improve our reception every day, putting up receive antennas and tweaking stations to pull out weak signals. Over the past days we hunted down several local noise sources — helpful, but only a drop in the ocean: turn off seven things and more seem to appear overnight.
Daytime power outages have been frequent and are keeping the team busy, but yesterday we acquired a new generator and it’s now running flawlessly, powering all stations at full capacity. A heavy storm brought down the WARC beam yesterday; it was damaged but repaired the next morning, and we quickly erected a temporary 30 m dipole to maintain low‑band activity during the night hours.
We were delighted to be invited to the “Weekend Special” hosted live by Tim K3LR at DXEngineering, where we answered questions live from Bangladesh in the early morning local time on Saturday — thanks for having us and for being a valued sponsor once again. The interview can be watched on YouTube.
QO‑100 satellite operations remain very successful with over 1,200 QSOs to date. A full and free LoTW upload for all QSOs made by S21WD will be performed once the team reaches their hotel in Dhaka next week.
The team is fully operational and in good spirits. Low‑band verticals (160, 80 and 60 m) will be dismantled after sunrise on Tuesday, 31.03. — that leaves two more night shifts and chances to work S21WD. High‑band antennas will be partly taken down on 01.04.; we will remain on selected bands until the morning of 02.04. with a reduced number of stations.
A full on‑site report and after‑action summary will follow once the team is back at base.
If you still need S21WD, take your chance in the coming days. If you like what we do, please consider supporting the project: www.next-generation-dx.com/donate. The team is very grateful for the fantastic local and worldwide support and feedback.
73 de S21WD team
