Benin DXpedition March 2006 : Latest News

Back home

April 1: we are all back home, safe and with all equipment. We logged about 24k QSOs on 160m-10m (65% CW, 13% RTTY, 22% SSB).

Before departure

13-Mar-2006: Everything is fine, we're ready to go in 48 hours. The team will assemble in Paris on 15-Mar-2006 12:30 local time. We should land in Benin 20:00 local time (19z). Operations expected to start March 16 afternoon UTC.

We now plan to bring a beam antenna and two amps, monobanders for 160m, 80m, 40m, 30m and three complete HF stations.

Licenses

03-March-2006: Licenses have been issued and we have a copy in our hands. Callsigns are: TY4TW, TY5LEO, TY5MR, TY5WP. You can see the TY5MR license.

SpiderBeam and more power

Thanks to the generosity of Con DF4SA, we'll bring a SpiderBeam wire beam antenna for 20-17-15-12-10m too! This is a robust and very lightweight beam by SpiderBeam.

We also decided to bring two amplifiers: an Acom 1000 (1kW) and an HLA-300V (300w).

Software: CW and propagation

Many thanks to Ron K5DJ who sponsored a license renewal for the excellent logging/contest software Writelog and to Jim KU5S who sponsored a license for the great propagation prediction software WinCAP Wizard. We don't forget that DX-peditioning is not just RF!