After a series of e-mail contacts with Hatsuo-san and Emil, we were able to work out his itinerary for the trip and understood that his schedule was very tight and that they did not have much time to stay in Guangzhou to meet hams there. We had suggested that Emil visit the most active six meter operator in Shenzhen � BG7OH, Mr. Mars Liu who is located just a few kilometres across the Hong Kong/China border.

Emil agreed with our suggestion and scheduled to visit Mars Liu on 1st July, 2000 (which happened to be a public holiday here � HKSAR Establishment Day).

On the evening of 29th June, 2000, Emil arrived in Hong Kong by train from Guangzhou. He spent the whole of 30th June, 2000 with a local tourist guide visiting local tourist spots such as Aberdeen, The Peak and Stanley Market. In the evening he made plans with VR2XMT, Charlie and VR2XMQ, Steve to meet up early the next morning.

The next morning, 1st July, 2000 VR2XMQ � Steve, VR2XRW � Logan, VR2IL � Sing & VR2PM � Koo went to Emil's hotel to pick him up for the journey to Shenzhen to meet BG7OH. Steve only accompanied them to the boarder as he had other business to attend to, but would meet up with them later upon their return across the border. VR2XMT- Charlie, had boarded the train and joined the group at Fanling.

According to the information released by the Hong Kong Immigration Department, there were approximately 200,000 people crossing the Lo Wu border on that particular day! Although we were travelling very early in the morning, all of us could feel the pressure of the crowds and we spent almost two hours passing the border Immigration and Customs check points before finally meeting up with Mars Liu who was waiting for us on the other side.

Mars had arranged for a van to pick us up and deliberately arrange to drive through the scenic route of Shenzhen City enroute to his QTH. Within half an hour, we all arrived at the QTH of BG7OH. Mars told us to prepare ourselves for some exercise as he lived on the 7th floor of an apartment block and there was no lift installed in his building. You can imagine how we all felt at the end of the climb up those stairs as the outside temperature was 33 degrees celsius. We were all dripping with sweat.

Mars immediately served us cold drinks and we all saw his nice ham shack for the first time before going up on the roof to look at his fine homebrew yagi antennas for 6M and HF.
While we were chatting in the shack with the 6M radio on in the background, we were suddenly very surprised to hear JA1VOK � Hatsuo-san working on 6M by multi-hop Es a W7 Station!! But no W7 signal could be heard by us. We took a lot of photographs together and Mars presented a gift to Emil (Chinese rare coins and a post card collection). Emil also presented Mars with a recent copy of QST magazine and an ARRL book edited by Emil entitled "Beyond Line Of Sight".

We then went for a Chinese brunch and had some DIM SUM at a local restaurant. Emil received a lot of interesting information from Mars about 6M and VHF activity in China. In order not to get into trouble and fight with returning crowds going back to Hong Kong, we decided we should head back shortly after lunch. It was a very special morning for Mars as Emil was the first Overseas ham ever to visit his shack. They both said their goodbyes before we boarded the train back to Hong Kong.

Charlie pointed out that in fact some skeds had been arrange by him and Steve in the past with some Stateside Big Guns but no contact could be established due to the heavy local QRM and illegal hash that was dominant on the 2M band here. He would possibly try again later if a quiet enough frequency could be found.

While on the way back into town, Charlie drove Emil through the northern part of the New Territories to show the difference between downtown and the New Territories. Charlie's XYL � Pansy and Logan accompanied Emil back into town.

Sing and Koo went on ahead to meet up with other HARDXA members who were going to meet up at a restaurant with Emil and Ann for dinner that evening.

We had a Chinese style banquet with Emil and Ann that evening and the following members were present:-

Emil W3EP Ann Emil's XYL Ken VR2LC Charlie VR2XMT Pansy XMT's XYL Steve VR2XMQ Sing VR2IL Ying VR2ZYW Logan VR2XRW Koo VR2PM Law VR2EQ

After dinner we took Emil and back to their hotel and took some photographs before saying goodbye to them as they had a 5:00 a.m. flight the next morning.

All of us enjoyed Emil's visit and maybe one day some of our members will be able to visit Emil in the States.