Another duty trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

For the DXFC score, I looked for the opportunity to get a guest radio license. Radio Club Argentina (RCA) web site says they will help guest radio licenses with free of charge. Fine. I have sent my application early 2010. Several months have passed, nothing happened. No reply from RCA though I sent e-mail several times.

I was lucky enough, I met Ron LU2AH at Friedrichshafen in June 2010. He was my key contact in LU. Soon after Friedirichshafen, I wrote an e-mail to Ron, and Ron pushed RCA for my license, then I received an e-mail from RCA saying my license was authorized. He suggested to have a dinner when I come to Buenos Aires.

My trip schedule was changed, as usual, and it would be WW SSB time. I started to seek for a position for WW SSB. I met Oms, PY5EG, at WRTC 2010 in Moscow and he suggested to join their ZW5B team. Hmm, it sounds good option.

Schedule changed again, and my trip was just for the meeting, one week (Mo-Fr) just after WW SSB. I gave up WW SSB, I decided  to just bring my small radio travel pack, K3 + small vertical which fits a suit case.

Unfortunately, my room was at second floor of 13 story hotel, which was surrounded by other tall buildings. I had no chance to change a room at higher position. As the room has a balcony, the antenna can be set up quite easily as shown in photos above. However, it did not work well, there was not much chance for such small antenna at the middle of city center.
Radio was set in a room as below.

I arrived at the hotel in the evening of WW SSB Saturday. I set up the antenna and the radio in 5minutes.  I do not know the reasons, either prop was so poor or tall buildings killed all signals, I did not hear many signals during the contest. I tried to find sigs and call them as much as possible. I managed to work some Qs with South Americans on 10, 15, 20, mostly PY. The highlight is W3LPL on 10, which is my only Qs with out of SA during WW SSB. Hat off to W3LPL antenna farm and excellent op (anonymous, YL op)

I called LU6EF on 10 during WW SSB. Some chat during the test suggested eyeball QSO in the mid of the city. It is also a lot of fun.

After WW SSB, I tried to catch my JA friends on the bands. It was tough. I sent CQ as a "Beacon", I asked friends thru Twitter to find me on the band. Though LU-JA path should be easy on 15m, it was really tough. Finally I logged aroud 100 JAs so far during 5 day trial.

After some correspondence by e-mail, I had a chance to visit Radio Club Argentin (RCA) HQ. Osar LU7ADC, who is running a coffee shop near my hotel, kindly picked me up at the hotel and bring me to the HQ.

The bulding of RCA HQ	TH7 (?) and other antennas on the top of building.
Wire antennas	Entrance of the HQ. You see the logo at the door.

Some officials of RCA kindly gathered at the HQ to wait for me. Funny enough, they know me very well though I never met one of them. The trick is that they watched ZL9CI DXpedition video, which I have perticipated, at the general conference of RCA last year. Our chat started about the DXpedition, then discussion about how to involve young stars into amateur radio, HF and DXing.

RCA will be 90 years old in 2011. They will have a large celebration ceremony in autumn 2011.

With RCA gangs. L to R, Javier LU5ANL, Norma LW7DFD, Oscar LU7ADC, Edgardo LU3AOI, Sergio LU3AYE, Jun JH4RHF and Carlos LU1BCE ( President of RCA)

The receiver (made in 1920's ?) which was used the first LU-VK radio contact.

I met Raul LU6EF on Friday after WW SSB

He has been active in DXing and contesting for long time. We had long fun chat at a cafe.
He introduced me some episodes of DXers who stayed in Buenos Aires for a while, which include K3ZO, OH0XX etc, and fortunately I know all of them personally. I really enjoyed the chat there, though it was for a short time in the morning before his work started.

Anyway, I really enjoyed my activities in LU during one week duty trip. Challenging of QSOs with JAs was fun, and I met a lot of LUs which is another fun.

Thanks to LU1BCE and RCA guys, LU6EF, LU2AH, LU1ARG and guys who worked me on the bands during this operation.