C5DX (2016) - DXpedition and demonstration of amateur radio to school students in The Gambia
I will be returning to The Gambia and operating
C5DX between Friday 12th February - Friday 19th February 2016.
The plan is to operate CW from our hotel in Banjul as well as demonstrate SSB from Farafenni Senior Secondary High School. Most of the operation will be CW and I hope to make around 2000 QSOs in between duties whilst on this school trip. The station will consist of a K3 (100W) and wire antennas. The location of antennas is not perfect due to many surrounding palm trees and buildings, so I predict my signals will be S3-S7 with most.
Plan to operate on 40m - 10m. Might try 60m. Will usually be low in band, but will avoid any large DXpeditions.
Operation will be spit - usually listening 1 UP. As usual, please respect the DX Code and only call when I come back to you.
Look forward to working you.
QSL either LoTW, Direct (
NO IRCs - only green stamps) or BURO. Logs will be uploaded AFTER the trip.
Previous C5DX DXpedition - 2015
LOG UPLOADED TO Club Log on 21/02/2015 https://secure.clublog.org/logsearch/C5DX
LOG UPLOADED TO LoTW on 1/3/2015
QSL CARDS NOW AVAILABLE - please NO IRCs for direct cards. Green stamps or correct postage if in UK.
Between 13th - 20th February 2015 I was in The Gambia on a school trip.
Details of trip: I am the headteacher of Sandringham School, St. Albans (
www.sandringham.herts.sch.uk) and since 2008 we have developed a strong link with
Farafenni Senior Secondary High School in The Gambia. The link has been focussed on developing the curriculum (science, maths, English and humanities) with various staff visiting from each school and two visits involving students. On this trip, we took three staff and five students. We have also sponsored a number of students through the school who would ovtherwise not have been able to be educated. This costs around £100 for their four years at the high school. This was my second visit and I wanted to demonstrate Amateur Radio to school students and staff as part of our scientific development of the curriculum.
School hall project: We have also been fudnraising to provide a school hall for Farafenni School. So far we have raised £10k and the exterior structure of the school is now complete (see picture below). We need around £5k more to complete the project, so if anyone is interested in helping out with some sponsorship this would be really helpful. Please e-mail me if you are keen to support this worthwhile project.
Callsign: the callsign,
C5DX was requested and issued by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) in The Gambia. They were very helpful.
Equipment: K3 and small switched mode PSU.
Antennas: Home made 40m-10m Windom, 50m of RG58 coax, 10m telescopic fiberglass pole. Thank you to everyone who managed to hear my signals - they were weak due to limited antenna space surrounded by many tall palms and buildings. Apex of windom was around 10m with ends at 2m.
Operation details: Between 13th and 15th February and 18th to 20th February operated from Badala Park Hotel, Serrekunda - by the coast. Between 16th - 17th February operated from Farafenni High School, Farafenni. This is about 180km inland from Banjul.
Logging: Used an i-Pad running the Mircules HAM QuickLog app. This worked well and was a convenient method of logging for a small operation like this.
Statistics: Made a total of 2007 QSO's with limited operation time around business. 73 DXCC and 267 band slots in total.
Reports: I wanted to provide accurate reports (not 599!) This slowed things down because I think people thought I was struggling to copy; this was not the case - I received well even if you were 519! No need to repeat calls etc if I have it correct first time.
Split operation: Used UP1 for most of the time in an attempt to keep any interference to other stations to a minimum. This did slow things down somewhat and on the last day I simply listened UP which meant that some of the weaker stations could be picked out if they called on a clear frequency.
QSLing: I will upload the log to LoTW as soon as the certificate is issued by ARRL (this has been requested). Will also produce a QSL card for those who would like a hard copy. Please send SAE and sufficient postage (IRCs NOT ACCEPTED - cards will be returned via Buro)
Really enjoyed the pile-ups and hope you managed to get through at some point.
Photographs:
Station - K3 and i-Pad logging
Windom antenna (you can just see the 4:1 balun and one leg of the dipole) - notice how it is surrounded by some pretty tall palm trees.
This photograph shows one of the legs of the windom - as it slopes down behind the hotel complex to about 2m above ground level. North is directly through the building!
The windom and a 15m dipole erected at Farafenni High School - this was in the clear and about 7m high.
One of the Farafenni students who passed some messages on SSB.
Our group from Sandringham with staff from Farafenni School. Mr. Jallow (Headteacher of Farafenni School is sixth from the left). Alan - G4DJX third from the right.
The school hall project in process - with walls and roof completed. This will be the largest school hall of any secondary school in the Gambia when completed - 35m long and 15m wide.
One of our sixth form students, Mariam, with some children from a village who came to play when we stopped for a break whilst travelling.
Cape Verde
