Blog Introduction

First Blog entry:
March 9, 2025
Thank you for checking out my Blog. for World DXpeditions. I am trying to combine contesting
with DXpeditions although I have little experience in either. I was first licensed in 1982 as
WB3HGQ and my shack was on the second floor of a silo (which was connected to my home)
with Drake equipment and a Collins amplifier. With the help of another ham I spent my days
building and climbing towers to support Yagi antennas and Rhombic antennas pointed to Europe
and Japan.

After two years of active contesting and DXing I moved to South Carolina and eventually
dropped out of Ham radio for 20 years. With retirement looming I renewed my interest in Ham
radio and was relicensed as N4VGE in 2017. My wife, Vicki, and I have been fortunate to travel
and operate ham radios in all 50 states and eight Canadian provinces and activated more than 400 unique POTA parks. My interest in Contesting and DXing was reignited.

In 2022 I started organizing my first DXpedtion to Vanuatu, an island nation in the South Pacific.
This was a two-week DXpedition that coincided with the 2024 CQ WW SSB Contest. We had a
great time and Vicki agreed that she would consider doing it again as long as she didn’t have to
get to the location in a rubber raft. Two of the hams from Vanuatu, N1ZN and K2SAV and I
made up the core group for another trip. Later K1ZM joined this core group.

While still in Vanuatu, the idea of going to Andaman and Nicobar Islands was discussed. We all
liked the idea of a two-week time window with a resort operating location and coinciding with
the CQ WW SSB Contest. Lessons learned from Vanuatu included to ship equipment, not to try
carrying it by commercial airlines. In addition antennas were critical to a successful DXpedition.

Finding that Andaman Island, number 58 in Club Log’s Most Wanted List, had opened its travel
restrictions and that there were now several resorts being opened, I began planning in earnest to
organize a Dxpedition for October 2026. Savo, K2SAV, submitted a small notice to Bernie
McClenny, W2UR, the Editor of the Daily DX. The response was immediate and overwhelming.
Jeff, K1ZM, a top 160m operator was instrumental in getting Krassy, K1LZ, to join. From
operating M2 with two radios and three hams in Vanuatu the idea grew to eleven hams and three
XYLs operating five contest quality radio systems with sixteen antennas.

Now I find myself organizing a group of fourteen to travel 10,000 miles to a small Indian Island
in the Bay of Bengal.

Van N4VGE