The Crystal Clear DX Group is a newly formed team of young Dxers which was established in September 2001. The founder member, Mark M0DXR felt enthused to create such a team and start planning for a Dxpedition organised by young amateurs. Nowhere too rare was decided as logistically, this would be much more difficult and 8Q seemed just about right for what we wanted to achieve. I was amazed by the amount of organisation and the excellent planning that D68C apopted and after the operation, I had the Dxpeditioning bug! So the search for team members started. A few of my friends from D68C gave me a few ideas on young efficient operators and those that would really like to go on a Dxpedition. I also began searching for these people - I already had a few ideas. In the end, I believe the 8Q7ZZ team is perfect.
Maldives, here we come!

Mark, M0DXR

Update - After the DXpedition

We arrived at Male airport on July 29th. It had been a tiring journey (about 11 hours from London), but we were there at last. When we got to the customs, the officers there were a bit astonished to see so much equipment, and of course they wanted to find out what it was all about.

Mark explained to them that we were going on a dxpedition and had to say what was inside each of the boxes. Also, a few forms had to be filled in. As a result of this paperwork, we were delayed for a few hours in Male airport. It was a boring wait, but at last they agreed to lets us take all equipment with us. Eventually, we managed to travel to the island on a speedboat, which only takes half an hour to get to our final destination: Lohifushi.

When we got there, it was almost getting dark (sunset is at 6:30 pm), so we just had time to have a quick look around. Our main objective was to find the best location for the antennas. The first impression was not very good. Our huts were surrounded by trees and there were quite a lot of bushes around. We went to bed without really knowing where we were going to put the antennas up.

When we woke up, we looked at the spot again and decided to put up the beams (A3S and A3WS) between our huts. In this way, we would not bother our "neighbours". The 6m beam was less of a problem, as it was much smaller, so we put it at the back of one of the huts.

The hotel manager did not make any objections and offered to help. The hotel staff were always very helpful and made our life easy. We said that we intended to put up a dipole antenna between two palm trees, and they immediately sent for someone who seemed to be quite used to climbing up palm trees. There was quite dense vegetation between the two trees, which made it difficult to put the antenna as high as we wanted but anyway we gave our "thumbs up" in the end, and the antenna was ready to go on the air.

Assembling the beams did not take long. Putting them up proved to be a bit trickier, though. The trees and the roofs of the huts were quite close, so we had to be very careful. We had some help from one of the room boys -Manik- who was kind enough to give us a hand with the antennas. Despite all difficulties, we managed to put the antennas up any major problems.

All the stations were set up quite quickly. Now we knew that everything was going to be fine. We went on the air on the 30th at about 12:30z. M0TTT, Robert and DJ1YFK, Fabian, were the first to get on the air, and they had a brilliant start with massive pileups all the time.

The two HF stations were running continuously, and the 6m station was running in beacon mode on 50.110. Fabian had worked out a device that enabled us to monitor the 6m signal through our VHF handhelds, and it proved to work fine. This allowed us to be listening for takers while having a walk round the island, for instance.

The mornings were always very quiet on the radio, and so were the afternoons. We could still work some Japanese and Europeans, but the rates were not very high. It was the right time to go snorkelling or to sit in the sun,�.monitoring the 6m freq of course!

Really good conditions started at about 14:00z (19:00 local time). At that time Europe and Japan were really loud every day. Pileups were continuous and usually lasted until 00:00z, when conditions started to get worse. Things were going fine and we were having great fun.

We worked a lot on CW and SSB, but also made some contacts on RTTY, especially on our last days there.

The first days were very quiet on 6m. We wondered if we were going to make any contacts at all. Fortunately, conditions improved and we were able to make 330 contacts on 6m. Most of them were Japanese. We had openings to Japan at about 7:30 z. Most of the contacts on 6m were on CW, but also made some on phone.

Then Europe was our obsession. Time was running out and we were really looking forward to and opening to Europe on 6m�.and we finally got it!! Many Europeans had the chance to work us. We were delighted.

40 meters was also a tough band to work. Signals were not too high, so we worked CW mainly. We decided to build a vertical antenna for 40 meters, just to see if we could improve performance on that band. Fabian and Robert managed to build it quite rapidly. It was a just wire hanging from a palm tree on the beach, and two radials - one of them right into the sea-.

Putting up this vertical wire antenna required a very sophisticated tool: a coconut. One of the ends of the antenna was tied to a coconut, and Robert threw it to the top of the palm tree. After several attempts, the coconut finally got tangled up there, so now it was ready. It worked quite well and we worked many Europeans on it.

In the end, we made about 25,400 contacts. This was certainly far beyond our expectations. We want to thank you all for being there. It was a pleasure to work you all.

See you all next time!!

8Q7ZZ team