The Kiwengwa QTH

After an 8 hours flight from Milan to Zanzibar, we meet for the first time the African life motive, " AKUNA MATATA" a good translation could be "NO PROBLEM, EVERYTHING IS OK". The very long VISA check-in, the long search of own baggage in a large room fulfilled with all flight baggage, and the inspection of the customers , are common usage, and as I had imagined my "strange" aluminum carrying case was inspected in all part, only my amateur radio license issued from the Tanzanian Communication Center solves any problem.. After one more hours of bus, in a very attractive surround equatorial jungle, we arrive to our village. It's the Kiwengwa Village Club, located in the eastern part of the island with the JA path on the seaside, there are 16 bungalows and 60 room on 3 two floors structures all between tons of coconuts palms. The Director of Club has been informed about my request and I had assigned a beautiful bungalow 60m from the sea, 300m away from any electronic devices, computer, TV, videogames, and without any neighbors. Start to setup the station in the morning , the power source is furnished from two big 5000CV diesel generator, any bungalows has more that 3Kw available, the only one table in the room became my shack table. Around the bungalow there were a lot of palms and banana trees, but the antenna place seem difficult to found, no place in the top of the bungalow, no easy place at the top of any tree, but ... in the rear of the bungalow there were a small area free of palms with some volcanic holes! Assembling and installing the antenna take no more that 2 hours, so before the sunset I was ready for my first CQ !! The 80m dipole was installed in the next days, with the big help of some locals, becamed my friend during my stay, that jumped on the top of the palms, not too very high, only 15m, but efficient. The last day, due a lot of request of top band QSO's, I had modified the 80m dipole tuning it on 160m, unfortunately in this period of the year and at that latitude the QRN is very strong over 9+20db and has limited my top band activity, anyway 27 guys has center the top band goal !!!

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