DXpedition to Moneron Island, reference RFF-0193 will take place from 15 to 31 July 2021.

It is planned to operate with RI0FM callsign on all bands in CW, SSB and FT8.
The recent and most detailed information about the expedition, plans, dates, team, equipment — on the expedition website RI0FM.

QSO with the RI0FM expedition — a unique opportunity to get into account the rarest RFF reference, as well as the Russian Federation entity and the Federal District for Sanctuary Russia Award Program.

Moneron is a picturesque hardly accessible island up to 3.8 x 7 km in size in the Tartar Strait, 50 km to west of the southern tip of the Sakhalin Island.

Moneron Island completely, together with the adjacent islands, rocks, reefs and stones, is part of Russian first marine natural park, the SPNA Moneron Island Natural Park, which is the only Russian horn-billed puffin (lat. Cerorhinca monocerata) nesting site. There are colonies of other birds on the adjacent islands and rocks, and there are sea lions and seals rookeries in some parts of the coast. Forests cover only about 20% of the island’s territory, the rest of the territory is covered with “grape” meadows, where the height of grasses entwined with wild grape vines, reaches 2.5 meters.

There is no permanent population on the island.

More detailed about Moneron Is. (in Russian but there are lot of pics):
Moneron Is. (LiveJournal)
Moneron Is. (wikipedia)

of attitude for specially protected natural areas demonstrates the RO3M team, which will be active since 10 UTC of August 28 until 12 UTC of August 30 from the Levashovsky zakaznik  (natural reserve), RFF-0994 (ATNO!) on 160–10 m and 2 m CW and SSB.

Transceivers FT-950, IC-746, FT-991 and Flex 6200, an ACOM-1000 power amplifier will be used, antennas Inverted Vee for 160–80–40–30 M bands and Spiderbeam for 20–17–15–12–10 M bands will be deployed.

QSOs with RO3M/p during this period are also valid for:
– RRNA: Knyaginya river R-46-0090;
– RAFA: Levashovo airfield HA2Q;
– RDA: Nekrasovsky district YR-20.

But what is the “great example”? Great example is in the fact that the RO3M team will clean from garbage area within a radius of 500 m from its location, for which they are prepared 100 garbage bags.

On April 14–17, during their trip to the North Pole, Martina DF3TS and Thomas DC8TM will be active on air from the “Barneo” drifting ice camp as RA/DF3TS/p and RA/DC8TM/p.

The future of the “Barneo” ice camp is unclear, and because of the catastrophically shrinking ice area in the Arctic Ocean, the possibility of establishing a QSO with any other drifting ice camp in the future is becoming increasingly doubtful. Thus, in a month there will be a unique chance to add on score the RFF-0176 — the “Severnyi Polyus” drifting ice polar station.

Martina and Thomas will be active SSB on the 40, 20 and 17 M bands with an emphasis on 20 m band, most likely around WWFF frequencies of 18.144, 14.244 and 7.144 kHz ±QRM, as well as FT8 on 40–30–20–17 M bands.
Yaesu FT-991 100 watt transceiver with LiFePO₄ batteries and vertical dipoles antennas will be used.

A short (~30 min) activity is planned from the Pole itself by the special callsign DP0LE (not RFF-0176) during the raid to the geographic North Pole.

Martina and Thomas will arrive to Svalbard (Longyearbyen town and airport) on April 10 and, pending a flight to “Barneo”, it is very likely they will appear on air as JW/DF3TS and JW/DC8TM until April 13 — IOTA EU-026 and, perhaps, some Norwegian WWFF reference not far away the town (there are 7 LAFF references on Svalbard, 5 of which have never been activated before).

You can find out about this trip more detalied and precisely on the page of Thomas https://www.qrz.com/db/DC8TM

73 & 44! Vit, RN3ANT
RFF coordinator

Since the beginning of 2019 we have started to maintain a Rating of RFF activators and hunters in the categories:

• individual activators by the number of RFF-references activated during the year;
• all over the World hunters by the number of RFF-references credited for the year;
• Russian hunters by the number of RFF-references credited for the year.

RFF Rating Rules:

1. The Ratings of RFF-activators and RFF-hunters are calculated on the base of approved logs, submitted by the RFF-activators to RFF log-manager. QSOs conducted since 00:00 UTC of January 01 and until 23:59 UTC of December 31 of the reviewed year are counted.

2. Any valid RFF references are counted for the Rating, regardless of whether they were already credited to activators and hunters in previous years or still not.

3. The activators rating considers only those references, where 44 or more QSOs were conducted by the activator in the reviewed year. Otherwise the reference is not taken into account in activator’s result for reviewed year.

4. RFF references are credited to hunters on the basis of QSO records in approved logs, submitted by activators, regardless of whether the RFF reference is credited to the activator or not (see Section 3).

5. TOP-10 activators and TOP-44 hunters charts are published on the website and updated as far as submitting and approving activators logs.

6. Activators logs are accepted for the Rating no later than January 5 of the year following the reviewed one.

7. The final results of the year are published on the website on January 15 of the year following the reviewed one.

8. Awarding:

• the best RFF-hunter and best RFF-activator of the year are awarded with commemorative prizes;
• RFF-hunters and RFF-activators, who took the II and III places, are awarded with commemorative certificates;
• russian RFF-hunters, who took I–III places, are awarded with commemorative certificates.

RFF national coordinator and log-manager are not nominee for awarding.

9. The Rules of RFF Rating may be changed in any their part during the current year. The changes are published on the website in the Rules and take effect:
— in terms of categories and awarding since the moment of publication depending on sponsoring;
— in other parts since the next year beginning.

“Russian Flora & Fauna”. activators and hunters Rating 2019

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73 & 44! RFF Team