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After a short stay in Germany, where I got the call DL/CT1DW (which I used seldom and only mobile), I settled in Luxembourg in late 1986. It looked like I was going to stay here for long, because I had obtained a permanent job with the European Union, and in fact I am still here. The Luxembourg authorities first gave me the temporary call LX/CT1DW but shortly after they issued the permanent licence as LX2DW. I could actually choose myself the suffix and I chose the same as in my original Portuguese call. The reciprocal agreement between Portugal and Luxembourg already existed, mainly as a result of the efforts deployed previously by LX2JL (José, now CT1CJJ) and LX2JM (José, now CT1CIX). They and LX2AW (Carlos, also CT1AWE) formed the small Portuguese amateur radio community in Luxembourg, a country then with about 400 amateurs. |
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I shall never forget the warm welcome from both José cousins the very first time I arrived in Luxembourg. They did not know me and we had only talked on the radio a couple of times before. In spite of that, I was picked up at the airport and driven to LX2JM's place where I was served a real "banquet". Some hours before, LX2JL's wife had given birth to their first child. Other Portuguese operators joined us later: LX2VA (Francisco, also CT1DTJ) came from Portugal but LX2RS (Rogério) and LX2CJ (Joăo) were living here and passed their exam in Luxembourg. There may be around a dozen Portuguese amateurs in this country in 2001. |
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As an attentive reader you will have noticed that so far I only mentioned LX2 callsigns. This was not a coincidence. Until some years ago the LX1 prefix used to be issued only to Luxembourg nationals and the LX2 prefix only to foreigners. This practice was found to be discriminatory and was discontinued. Nowadays the authorities issue LX1, LX2 or LX3 calls irrespective of the operator's nationality, the latter indicating a VHF licence. In spite of its 581 callsigns (situation in 2001), Luxembourg is still somewhat rare on the bands because there are not so many active operators. LX9 are club stations, LX4-8 are special event stations and LXŘ are repeaters. LXŘPAC is the most widely used packet radio BBS. The Luxembourg national and IARU member society is R.L. ('Réseau Luxembourgeois des Amateurs d'Ondes Courtes'), with a total of 375 members. All these figures concern 2001 and were taken from 'Bulletin du R.L. 2/01'. The CEPT licence is in force in Luxembourg. |
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During my first three years in this country I had no chance to be active apart from sporadic mobile operation. I lived in an apartment building and the permission to put up any kind of antenna was strongly denied. It was not until 1989 that I could resume to a certain extent my amateur activity since we bought a plot outside Luxembourg city and eventually built a house on it leaving some room for antennas. In the beginning I only used a multiband dipole and a vertical for VHF and UHF but the situation changed radically in the Summer of 1993, when I decided to put up a big beam which dramatically increased my DXing and general amateur possibilities. It is a 10 element |
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beam for all bands from 40 to 10 meters (including the WARC bands), model Sommer XP-707, mounted on top of a 20 meter high telescopic tilt-over tower by Versatower. This is the appropriate place to convey my sincere thanks to the friends who helped putting up this huge array, specially LX2LA (André) and CT1BY (Carlos, occasionally in Luxembourg after coming back from the Ham Radio in Friedrichshafen). Without them I doubt whether it would have been possible. The antenna has been doing a great job for about 8 years and sometimes I only regret that I am not using it as |
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often as it deserves. As a matter of fact, my amateur activity decreased again in the last year or so and the reasons for that seem to be beyond my control. I had the intention of starting satellite operation, I postponed it several times maybe until Phase 3D would be launched. Now AO-40 is in space but my satellite beams are still waiting in my garage. I think some of the time I used to spend on the radio is now shared with the computer, I know I am not the only one to whom this happens. Anyway I was able to work so far (May 2001) 276 DXCC entities from Luxembourg, 268 of which are confirmed. For some time however my irregular activity from Luxembourg was compensated to a certain extent by some activity from other places on a shared tourist / amateur radio basis. Some people would call it DXpeditions, but I consider them rather modest to deserve that name. They all had in common the fact of having been one amateur only operations, as opposed to the huge DXpeditions manned by dozens of amateurs. I will give an idea of that activity in the following chapters. |
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