5B8AP
Cyprus
 
IOTA 2007

 Pictures from the activity Page 1 Page 2 Page 3

The full story
This DXpedition took place a couple of weeks after P3CA. It was planned a few months ahead, but serious preparation started about a month ahead and got very intense during the last two weekends before the event.

Thursday 26/7/2007
We met early afternoon at 5B4XF's QTH. We loaded the cars and set off for Latsi. We arrived there late in the afternoon, had dinner and prepared our lunch for the next day.

Friday 27/7/2007
We woke up before 6AM, and left for the Latsi harbour. The cars were unloaded and all equipment was loaded onto two speedboats. We boarded a third one. We reached Agios Georgios islet (AS-120) in about 20 minutes and the hard work begun... The equipment was first unloaded onto the rocks so that the boats could leave. We then had to carry it up to the center of the islet where we would set up our operating tent. Carrying and setting up the tents and equipment took at least 12 hours. The Spiderbeam antenna was erected at 19:00 and the TA-33JR followed shortly after. Setting up our personal tents, tidying up the equipment etc. took until midnight.

Saturday 28/7/2007
We woke up early to make the last preparations before starting to operate. A few hours later we were visited by a TV reporter who took interviews from operators and prepared a short reportage (1.5 minutes) that was aired the same night at the station's main news bulletin. Stavros (5B4AFM) and Marios (5B4WN) arrived with the same boat as the TV station crew and joined us.Operation started with the 5B4NC/P callsign continued with C4MG as soon as the contest started at 1200 UTC.

Sunday 29/7/2007
Operation for IOTA continued. When the contest ended (1500 local time) we started disassembling the station and packing up the equipment. The boats arrived at 1930 to pick us up. The tidius task of loading the equipment on the boats was repeated. We arrived at the Latsi harbour, unloaded the equipment and loaded it to our cars. After a nice dinner at a local restaurant we took the road home at 2300. Fortunately I didn't have to go to work the next day :-)

Results
Around 1000 contacts outside the contest and 2700 during the contest. We were ranked 5th in the DXpedition category and won the Island High Power throphy!!
See the contest results.

Operators
Stavros (5B4AFM), Spyros (5B4MF), George (5B4KH), Andreas (5B8AP), Marios (5B4WN), Paris (5B4XF), Nestor (5B4AHZ) and Cliff (SV1JG).

Cliff is the vice-president of the Radio Amateur Association of Greece (RAAG) and came to Cyprus to participate in the contest. He also published an article about the DXpedition in the November-December issue of "SV News" magazine.

QSL card front and back.

Pictures and more details about the event coming soon!

Last update: 31 July 2008