We checked in at our bungalow at13.30 UTC. The conditions for the erecting antennas were favourable. I started with the groundplane and had two hours until sunset. After the erection of the groundplane at the balcony terrace, my wife and me tuned the antenna. The groundplane (S4 from Wimo) is for 7/14/21/28 MHz, but it is very difficult to tune it. About 15.40 UTC I was satisfied with the result. At 15.50 I did my first QSO as 5H1/DL7VSN with RV4CT on 14 MHz. After dinner I had a QSO with my father-in-law, Reiner/DL3BRE. Later I worked 3DA0CA, he wanted to work with me on 80 m and RTTY, but I wasn't ready for this. After some QSO's I was very tired and went to bed.
On the next day I needed help of the staff. Fortunately, I found somebody who could climb on the palm tree. After about an hour the dipole was erected 7 - 8 meters over the ground. The direction was exactly north - south. Now I could work on all frequencies.
What can I say about the working conditions? Conditions were best with Europe, North America and Japan. But I reached all continents and 86 DXCC countries. I hope that I was a new one for somebody. Until the 4th of October I got 70 written inquiries for QSL. Most of them want to have QSL for RTTY because RTTY is very rare from Tanzania. I did 250 QSO's in RTTY, the rest only in CW. I did two QSO's in SSB, one was a show for the staff of the Tamarind Beach Hotel and the other was with my father-in-law for some birthday greetings.
QSO - Statistic:
| MHz | 1,8 | 3,5 | 7 | 10 | 14 | 18 | 21 | 24 | 28 |
| QSO | 6 | 87 | 166 | 457 | 327 | 1125 | 589 | 571 | 139 |
Here you can find the L O G - search
QSL is possible via the DARC bureau or direct to Harald Schlesinger, Buergerheimstr. 19, 10365 Berlin, Germany (SASE) QSL card
The QSL-cards are back from the printing office. (11/13/1997) All direct QSL are answered. (11/16/97) Bureau QSL are answered from 0 to 9 and A to J (alphabet, without A for USA). (11/17/1997) The rest of the QSL are answered via the bureau. (11/30/97)Some details about my equipment and the circumstances of my work:
The transmitter works very reliable. The work with the receiver in pile up was very difficult because the band width of the receiver is too high. Another problem was the very strong QRN. But the biggest problem was the discipline of some European radio amateurs, so I went sometimes QRT if they didn't understand me. Sorry, but I was on holiday, I wanted no stress, only relaxing and fun with amateur radio. Pile-up's with USA and Japan were very easy.
It works also very reliable. But even the best power supply won't help you if you havn't current. Every evening we had two hours power failure, with the failure times changing every day. The best time for me was usually dinner time, from 18.00 to 20.00 (15.00-17.00 UTC). The worst time was from 22.00 to 24.00 on sunday and saturday.
I bought this key especially for this trip because it has a very light weight. But I am discontent with the key. After some days the spring was damaged and so it was difficult for me to key correctly.
I had no problems with this equipment. It works very good on all frequencies and antennas.
Pentium 75 MHz, 8 MB RAM, HDD 810 MB. I used a self-written (with the help of my friend Rainer) logging program. The database is Paradox for Windows and it helped me to avoid doubles. I believe that I had to say "QSO before" about 300 times. I don't understand this fact. 5H1 is not so often on frequency. Thus you should remember whether you worked me before or not.
