Pirate Station

D1DX no info..looks like a pirate station today on 14.204 at 2055utc..

 

D1DX is a pirate station. I receive D1DX quite strongly on a daily basis here in the UK. The station transmits CQ D1DX KN87 repeatedly over and over almost 24 hours a day on all bands. The station is also quite deaf which indicates it is probably transmitting at extremely high kW power, thereby reaching stations who find it impossible to reply back with their permitted power levels. It is quite a nuisance as it causes Grid Tracker to repeat "Wanted DXCC" over and over and over and over all day long. I need to find a way to fool grid tracker into ignoring D1. Ideas anyone?

D1DX is not on LOTW or QRZ.com which means he is not eligible for any bona fide award schemes. That makes me wonder, why bother spending 24 hours a day on FT8???

Interestingly though, the D1Dx reports to PSK Reporter. It can be seen how "deaf" the station really is when comparing sent/receive signals. The station cannot hear many stations outside of mainland Europe, yet is heard World Wide.

In the last 24 hours, D1DX heard 582 stations yet it was heard by 1906 stations.
For my station, those numbers are the other way around!

 

Fortunately, he seems to only call CQ and does not respond to others calling CQ (from what I've seen). Makes it easier to avoid working him.

 

I've seen him work stations, but mostly I believe the station is left unattended calling CQ 24 hours/day with the Call 1st option switched off in WSJT-X. I don't understand the motive behind it. Maybe a political one.

 

I too refuse to acknowledge their presence since it is territory occupied-stolen from another country (Ukraine). To 'fool' WSJT just copy the last contact in your wsjt log and paste it at the end. Then modify the contact to his call. Now when he shows up it won't be seen as a new entity. If you want to also remove notices on individual bands you would need to repeat that and change the band to ones that you do operate. [depending on how contacts are transferred over you might want to delete it from your log if it shows up after you've done this.]

 

Unfortunately it's Grid Tracker giving the trouble. The only way I can think of to make Grid Tracker shut up is by logging him in Logbook of the World, but I refuse to do that. There must be another way. I think he knows it makes everyone's Grid Tracker go crazy. It's also likely to be more than one op too.

 

Ukraine has been divided since 2014. The eastern part is mainly Russian and war-like conditions prevail here. Actually, an international armistice was agreed and the eastern part should be under self-administration. Ukraine has withdrawn the licenses of all radio amateurs from the eastern parts of the country. In other words, they are not pirates, but radio amateurs like you and me. We are all a peace-loving community. Instead, we should work to ensure that the radio amateurs get their licenses back.

The QRZ Pages showed the D1 calls, but was removed.

73 de DG1OAM

 

If last comment is true and I lack the background to confirm that, should we stop calling him a pirate? I am not in favor of further oppressing the oppressed.

 

Yes, I would agree. Only if that is true that they had their Ukranian licences revoked. That shouldn't happen to civilians who never asked for conflict.

 

There are also some hams in northern part of Cyprus Island, under control of Turkey, who are not recognized as valid operators because their government on the island (northern half) is not internationally recognized. Very sad, no choice on their part but they can't get recognition.

 

There are similar cases: (I got the Information from wikipedia)

1B (not officially awarded by the International Telecommunication Union, but tolerated) [1] Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
1S (not officially awarded by the International Telecommunication Union, but tolerated) [1] Spratly Islands
1A (not officially awarded by the International Telecommunication Union, but tolerated) [3] Sovereign Order of Malta
S0 (not officially awarded by the International Telecommunication Union, but tolerated) [1] Democratic Arab Republic of Sahara
===================
D0-D1 (not assigned by the International Telecommunication Union, therefore illegal) Donetsk People's Republic

The wording in Wikipedia alone shows that double standards are used here.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITU-Präfix

73 de Jens, DG1OAM

 

So are we not supposed to qso with them. How is the avg ham to know? No qrz no qso?

 

I think QRZ should have a special page listing such ITU prefixes with a good explanation about what's happening and why. Anyone searching an individual callsign from these areas would be redirected to the special QRZ page.

QRZ is a world wide resource and not listing these callsigns or ITU zones only does us all a disservice, especially new or inexperienced Hams.

 

D1DX is a "pirate" station in the Donetsk People's Republic. It has been on the air since 2014, when Donetsk proclaimed its breakaway from Ukraine. I've seen D1DX on 30M FT-8 recently (March 2024), and there's info and audio recordings of them operating on phone:

https://www.cqdx.ru/ham/ham_audio/d1dx-on-the-air/



According to one of the websites: QSL via UA6GG

 

The "Sovereign Order of Malta" is a Catholic lay society which is "non-territorial". I wonder why they would not use 9H (Malta). I get the sense that 1A is probably not used, or used rarely.

I digress: HV (Vatican) is a sovereign city state and a valid prefix, but HV is actually run by Italian hams. I've been to the Vatican twice, and never found out where HV was located in the Holy See. It'd be awesome to operate HV. I get this sense that not just any tourist, even a nominal Catholic like myself, can operate HV

73, Jordan AB2T