FK/5B4ALX first look

My trip to FK starts in Milan (Italy) … here the adventure starts, it will drop me at 17,000km far from home.

The first flight is to Dubai with a mighty A-380 .. I board the baggage, I greet everyone and the adventure begins.
In checked baggage: antennas, cables, power supplies, tools and very few clothes; in the backpack: PC, camera and IC-7300.
From Milan to Dubai, then Sidney and finally, after 37 hours of travel the last Boeing AerCalin brings me to Tontouta Airport.
I got home but I have not arrived yet .. I wait for 1 hour shuttle then taxi and, in the dark of the first night, I realy now got home.
A small outbuilding near the bay of Plum, not far from the military base (after all I dont want to lose my habits, ZC4 is only 20km from my home in Cyprus).
The evening immediately start to assemble the first vertical and the following day everything is ready for the first CQ.

No QRM on almost all bands apart when it rains hard and the water wets the power line cables but rarely happens.

I decide to operate “good” a few bands (15/17/20/30), unfortunately in 40m there is no way to bring down the ROS and so abandon the idea of ​​being active on this band.
During the closing periods the silence reigns supreme, only a few faint signals in FT8 from JA, they come here almost always.
VK, ZL are the neighbors and their signals often break the silence; among them, a little weaker but workable in low-power all the pacific calls (KH2, 5W, etc etc).
In 30m JA populate the frequencies in FT8-CW-RTTY … we must always be listening .. the signals arrive and disappear with incredible simplicity .. a bit ‘like the 6m in the EU but here we’re speaking of 15,20,30m !!
The vertical half-wave of 20m works really good, the report from OC and Asia are loud and It bring my low-power signal to Europe as well so I decide to participate in the WPX SSB Contest not in 15m as expected but in 20m QRP and see what you can do with 5W from here…. remember that the minimum QRB to reach VK4 are about 2000km and that within a radius of 4000km there is a concentration of operators like those of a small nation or a single region of a medium nation.
In recent days I can make QSO with some friends from Italy in 20m SSB and RTTY; the chatt instead keep me in touch with everyone without limits of distance, in a country where the Italian and Cypriot telephone operators have not roaming.
The first morning of the contest, from nothing a signal to 9+20 … YJ0 … I stop, I think and realize that it is a neighbor .. less than 500km… then follow H44 and E51 with really “huge” signals
As I write to you I’m in a dead time of the contest, the DVK calls automatically at 14.155kHz and occasionally interrupt to respond to some JA or VK.
I have more than 10 days ahead of me … who knows what this Dxpedition will reserve for me before taking the first of three flights that will take me back home, before planning a new adventure in the Pacific !?

Hope to have you on my log … de FK/5B4ALX – Alex