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News Desk29 December 2011 3DA0PW Swaziland - 21st to 29th February 2012 
Phil, G3SWH and John, G3OLU
/ EA5ARC will be active as 3DA0PW from the
Hawane Resort in western Swaziland between 21st and 29th February
2012. 10 December 2011 C91NW - Mozambique (by Mike K9NW)My previous two trips to Africa (3DA0NW/2005 & A25NW/2009) lacked meaningful QSO totals on 10m and 12m so I was very much looking forward to this trip with current condx. It was evident right away that there was demand for C9 on these bands. My first stint on 10m CW my second night there resulted in a six hour run and 927 QSOs, and ended only because the band finally closed - just before midnight local! In subsequent days I spent a lot of time on 12m, knowing that I'd have ample opportunity to put a dent in the 10m demand during the CQWW. My station consisted of:
It wasn't necessarily by design that I spent about 99% of my time on CW but demand was greater there (there's local activity on phone) and quite simply I never ran out of guys to work on CW so never felt overly compelled to talk! I also had planned on RTTY activity but I ran out of time trying to get my new MKII set up and working with everything prior to departure. I ultimately ended up messing around briefly with the CW to DATA feature on the K3 and made a few QSOs before the pileup started. It worked fine when only one station was calling but gets difficult with multiple callers when you only have a 2" segment of the display from which to read incoming data, with no way to backtrack. But Daniel ZS6JR/C91JR picked up the slack on the digital front making around 1000 QSOs on RTTY and PSK with his own station across the room. The combined results of CQWW + before/after contest DXing: C91NW
CQWW CW Contest results:
 3DA0NW - SwazilandOn the way back to Johannesburg we stopped by Hawane Resort in Swaziland for a couple days of winding down with a liberal dose of DXing tossed in. I was only QRV on the higher bands here as I was utilizing antennas already installed at the site. The 40m wire four-square had been trashed by cows. The rear element of the A4S had blown off in a windstorm but the antenna still worked fine on 10m and reasonably well on 20m. The A3WS for 12m and 17m was unscathed. Once again, high band demand was quite evident by the size of the pileups! Results 3DA0NW
 30 November 2011 From the QSL Manager C91JRDaniel has just finished a very successful DXpedition to Beline in Mozambique and has activated C91JR once again, this time with data modes which are very rare from C91. The C91JR QSL cards have just arrived from the printer and as soon as I have a copy of Daniel's C91JR log I will get the cards off to everyone requesting a QSL card. For direct QSL requests I require a self addressed envelope and $2 to cover return postage. If there is no postage enclosed the cards will be returned via the bureau. Please send QSL requests to:- Dr David Hutchinson GI4FUM
40 Oldstone Hill Muckamore County Antrim BT41 4SB Northern Ireland United Kingdom I am also QSL manager for the Swazi DXpeditions in 2008 and 2009 and the Mozambique DXpedition in 2010. QSL cards for all these DXpeditions were printed by UX5UO Print http://www.ux5uoqsl.com A reminder that we plan to visit Oranjemund in Southern Namibia in March 2012 for the CQ WPX SSB contest. Please contact me for details. David GI4FUM/3DA0DJ/C91DJ    CQ ~ DX African Safaris sincerly thanks Gennady V. Treus UX5UO from the Ukraine for the professional service in printing the batch of cards for this and for our previous DXpeditions. He can be contacted at:- He has an agent in the UK so it is possible to order on line and pay in local currency to his agents. 9 November 2011 Another African adventure is about to unfold21 November to 1 December 2011This time it will be C91NW. I'm looking forward to visiting another country (and new zone!) for this year's CQWW CW contest. And for that matter, maybe even dipping my toes into a new ocean! It should be even more interesting this year with the vastly improved high band conditions. Previous trips to 3DA0NW (2005) and A25NW (2009) only saw spotty openings on 10m and 12m. Possible new additions to the operation this time are RTTY and maybe even some 6m. I'm still very much a newbie to the digital modes so we'll see what happens. "Thanks again to Daniel for handling all the logistics....DXpeditioning should always be this easy!! -- Mike K9NW"  30 September 2011 Moçambique South East Africa - updateCQWW SSB 2010 Results C91WW
The results are out….C91WW, a multi-single entry comprising David Hutchinson GI4FUM, Tony Bettley G4LDL and Daniel Hubbard ZS6JR, is the trophy winner for Contest Expeditions for the SSB leg of the 2010 CQWW Contest. With a points total of 5.998 million and total qso count of 4413 C91WW was placed 3rd in the M/S Africa section. This is best result in the SSB leg ever by CQ DX African Safaris. Somewhat improved conditions as well as some sharp operating made the difference. My thanks to my team mates David and Tony….see you again soon. BTW this not the first time CQ DX African Safaris has been involved with the winning of the Contest Expedition trophy…..twice before Mike K9NW has been the operator for winning the same trophy, as 3DA0NW 2006 and A25NW 2009 both in the CW leg of CQWW in the single op high power category. Will he do this again……? Keep watching this site for further details.......…
24 December 2010 Moçambique South East Africa - updateA message from the QSL manager I hope to have caught up with the backlog of direct QSL cards this evening but it is likely that they won't be through the letterboxes until the end of December given the freezing weather here in the UK. 73 02 December 2010 Mozambique - updateFrom the QSL manager My apologies for the delay in sending out direct QSL cards. Our cards arrived from our printer UX5UO this morning. I have over 400 direct QSL cards awaiting replies and I will start into these this afternoon. I have a number of direct cards who have not enclosed either dollars or IRCs. I have already stated that if no postage is sent with your card I will treat your card as a bureau request. I'm sorry but I will not deal with cards via the bureau until I have dealt with the backlog of direct cards. 73 1 November 2010 Mozambique - South East Africa - October 2010From the QSL manager The October 2010 Dxpedition to Praia do Bilene in Mozambique is now QRT. In 12 days of operating C91MS; C91DL; C91DJ; C91JR; C91MV and C91WW made 15,000 contacts and its seems that many of you out there need to confirm Mozambique as a new entity for DXCC. If you worked us you are in luck. We will have a nice colourful QSL card for you soon - specially designed for you by Glenys (G8KWD) C91KW. We hope to have these by the end of November. You can get yours by sending your QSL card and a self addressed envelope with at least $2 to David GI4FUM whose postal address is correct on QRZ.com. If you don't enclose enough to cover postage your card will go via the bureau. Tony (G4LDL) C91DL was our top operator with over 6000 contacts under a variety of callsigns. David (GI4FUM) C91DJ made over 3000 contacts under his own callsign and C91MS and C91WW with Daniel (ZS6JR) C91JR making a similar number of contacts. We made 1430 contacts in 94 countries with C91MS (Mozambique Scouts)for Jamboree on the Air. We entered a Multi Single station in the CQ World Wide SSB contest with the call C91WW making 4,500 contacts in 137 countries. Station details - we used two Elcraft K3 transceivers with Icom IC2KL solid state linears. We also had a Yaesu FT100MP available but the K3s were the preferred rigs. Antennas were a Cushcraft A4S beam for 20/15/10 at 70ft and a Cushcraft A3WS beam at 60ft for 17/12. These were mounted on a 4 section lattice steel tower on a trailer. We had a four square (phased verticals) for 40m and a base loaded vertical for 80/160. Conditions on 80m and 160m were poor because of high noise leves but the 80m vertical was used to good effect on 30m. We were plagued by frequent thunder storms for which we had to close our stations down until the storms passed. Station logging was done on personal laptop PCs using the Wintest, SD, Xmlog and N1MM logging programs. We were unable to network our PCs so we had to resort to running a single station in CQWW. We expected to find South African round pin power sockets and had adaptors to convert the UK square pin plugs to these. However it turned out that power sockets in Mozambique are the same as the 2 pin sockets found in Europe. Fortunately Daniel had allowed for this. In case you are wondering we had no internet connection after we crossed the border into Mozambique so we have not been able to read any emails until we return to South Africa. You could join us on our next Dxpedition and experience what its like to be on the end of Big pileups. Where would you like to go in Africa - its your choice? CQ-DX African Safaris will provide the radio equipment and the antennas. You just get yourselves out here and join in the fun. Contact us for details to discuss the next Dxpedition.
73 17 October 2010 Mozambique - South East Africa - October 201053rd Jamboree on the Air - C91MS Mozambique Scouts In October 2010 Tony G4LDL and David GI4FUM visited Bilene in Mozambique to run a JOTA station for Mozambique Scouts. They were joined by 6 scouts who travelled up from Maputu to participate in the amateur radio activity. They told us that a JOTA station was run for Mozambique Scouts on one previous occasion ten years ago. Unfortunately neither Tony or David speak Portuguese but one scout was bilingual and was able to translate to Portuguese for us. We made 1430 contacts in 93 countries in 48 hours. Radio conditions were exceptional and we worked pileups on 10m, 12m and 15m. Many stations were eager to work us for a new country as activity from Mozambique is rather rare. All requests for QSLs should go to David GI4FUM who is QTHR - enclose a self addressed envelope and $2. QSLs will be available from late November 2010. Please see the "Photo Gallery" page for images from Mozambique73 06 September 2010 Mozambique - South East Africa - 2010Confirmed CQ ~ DXpedition
04 May 2010 Anyone fancy a trip to Mozambique in October 2010? I am running a DXpedition to Bilene which is a costal resort
on the Indian Ocean 150 km north of Maputu. We fly out from
Heathrow on 13th October to Johannesburg and drive up to Mozambique.
We plan to run a station for Jamboree on the Air with local
scouts on the weekend of 16th/17th October and we will enter
a station for CQWW SSB over the weekend of 30th/31st October.
There will be plenty of opportunity for individuals to operate
under their own C91 callsigns and if you fancy sun bathing
on an Indian Ocean beach in late African spring there will
be plenty of opportunity for that too. There are a few places
on the team still available. If you want further details check
out our Events page at 73 10 March 2010 We are currently planning a DXpedition to Mozambique in October 2010 with the intention of running a station for Jamboree on the Air with Mozambique Scouts and a contest station for CQWW SSB. We have made contact with the chief scout of Mozambique and he is very pleased to hear that a JOTA station might be possible and will give it his full support. We are currently researching sites to operate from in Mozambique. 73
David 23 November 2009
CQ-DX African Safaris is pleased to announce that we are able to offer 2 Elecraft K3 radios to the multi-operator dxpeditions. The older Yaesu FT1000MP’s have offered fine service over the last 4 years….however, apart from the better dynamic range the Elecraft K3’s offer lower phase noise characteristics, relay switched front-end filters resulting in better receive immunity to intermod especially in the closer station proximity found in dxpeditions and better DSP functionality. They are also smaller and lighter than the older radios. With the improvement in the solar conditions the radio will also permit operation on the 6m band, a feature the Yaesu’s did not have. The K3’s are fitted with 8 pole 2.8 kHz 8 ssb and 400hz
cw filters. I am particularly pleased with the announcement
and look forward to the next big group to put the radios to
the test……..73 Daniel ZS6JR 2 November 2009 SwazilandDavid has just received a certificate from CQ magazine for the 3DA0DJ operation in the CQWW SSB contest in October 2008. The station was 7th in Africa in the Multi-Single category with a score of 4013316. The operator team was GI4FUM, ZS6JR and ZS6GF. The usual power brownouts were a challenge but fortunately the team had planned ahead and had a generator on hand for when the power went down. Anyone interested in joining the team for the 2010 CQWW SSB contest weekend at Hawane should queue up now.
24 August 2009 SwazilandThe following item (written by Paul Martin EI2CA) appeared in this week's IRTS News script - 3DA0SS Swaziland David, GI4FUM, has returned from Swaziland and reports that the 3DA0SS expedition was a big success. Around 20,000 QSOs were made, many of them on the data modes. The International Scout Camp was also a great success with the scouts learning many new development skills. The IRTS committee, with the agreement of the CQIR Contest sponsor, Dargle Builders Limited, agreed that the excess in the contest fund which amounted to more than 1,000 Euro, should be donated to the Swazi scouts towards the cost of providing clean water at their campsite. While David was there, the new pump was installed and commissioned and clean water is now available for all the camp needs. Following the AFRI75 expedition to Swaziland and the resultant publicity for the Scout Project there, many individual Society members donated monies for projects at the campsite. We are happy to act as a conduit for any such funding and if you are interested in helping you should contact Paul EI2CA or David GI4FUM. |
