Brasilia is a city planned on the drawing
board of the architects Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa which was built up, in substantial sections, in only 3 years of construction period.
Since its inauguration in the year 1960 it replaced Rio de Janeiro as the capital of
Brazil. The city is situated in the middle west of the country in the so-called federal district
" Distrito Federal ". This federal district, which represents a Federal State also,
covers a surface of 5.783 km² and is placed on the central heighlands at 1100 m over NN. In Brasilia live about 250,000 inhabitants. There are more than 1.5 millions inhabitants in the
many satellite cities, which surround Brasilia. The sketch of the city reminds of a bird with wings,
how the map shows. 
Actually the wings are defined as ASA SUL and ASA NORTE (south wing and north wing). The " body " of the bird represents the " monumental axle " (Eixo monumental), in which all government buildings are arranged.
The city was very extensively planned with many green areas by the famous artist and landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx.
However unfavorable is that the infrastructure is bundled in blocks like shopping centers, banks, pleasure etc. so that
one moves in the city practically only by car. This is supported also by the crossing-free traffic management.
Here a view of the ASA SUL:
Left is situated the federal central bank, in the center divides the " Eixão " the " south wing " into two halves,
from which the road designations result: e.g. L3 or W5,
freely translated: East 3 or west 5. Anyway, all the designations of the
roads and house numbers are very hard to accostumate. There are no street names, how we know here in Germany and you must handle e.g. an address like our temporary second QTH: HIGS 706 Bloco D Casa 52. I know Brasilia since 1981 and in this time I have spent summed up approx. 2 years in 17 stays there, but I did not to get accustomed yet to the amusing addressing...
What one finds quiet good is the climate in the central highland. It's much more
agreeable for us Central Europeans, than that tropical climate in the rest of the country.
Here the weather is determined strongly by the dryness in the " winter " between June
and October and the damp hot summer from December to March. The
average of temperature are in the winter 21°C and in the summer 28°C. The artificial lake of Brasilia, the Lake Paranoá, partly compensates the very extreme dryness of the air in the winter.
The lake gives me now the transition to the amateur radio. Just there is also situated the brazilian amateur radio club, named LABRE. The building accommodates both the administration of the LABRE and the local club of Brasilia. Each first Saturday of the month the local hams meet on the occasion of the " Eletroca ". Like we do here also QSL cards are fetched and exchanged, one can sell and buy used equipments and last but not least one can meet e lot of other hams to talk, eating grilled meat, the so-called Churrasco with much beer...hi. When I am in Brasilia, the participation in this meeting is the absolute high light of my vacation : -)
Here are some photos of the the Eletroca .
Who is still interested to see small pictures from Brasilia like postcards with my comments please look at this hyper link .