Christmas Island

I haven't been a ham for long, a little over two years, and I haven't been particularly active in that time. All of my operating therefore, has been from home. I like the idea of operating in the field with a portable setup, but I just haven't got around to it yet. Okay, you can by them in the shops these days (a round tuit that is), but procrastination is one of my hobbies. I was going to write a book about procrastination once but... well you get the picture.

Anyway, I've enjoyed watching most of James Brooks' (9V1YC) DXpedition videos recently (and was even lucky enough to contact him in the CQ WPX SSB contest late last month). I love the idea of heading off to some remote island for a week or two and playing radios. Actually, I love the idea of heading off to a remote island somewhere, period. It just seems to encapsulate so many of the things I enjoy, radio, travelling, seeing the native wildlife, problem solving and working as a tight-knit team to get a job done.

There's a couple of DXpeditions coming up in VK land soon, one of those is to Christmas Island (OC-002), sometime in July. Okay, Christmas Island is actually closer to Indonesia than Australia, but it's still ours. It's not a huge DXpedition like the ones 9V1YC films, but it's still one I'll be looking forward too for two reasons. Firstly, since I haven't been all that active so far, there's are heaps of new ones for me still to get and Christmas Island is definitely one of them. Secondly, until I get a rotator for my Comet H-422, that's pretty much the way my antenna is facing, so it shouldn't be too hard to contact them, I hope.

As I mentioned, it's not a big DXpedition, there's only four operators. They are Marq CT1BWW (VK9XWW), John EA3GHZ (VK9XHZ), Henry EA5EOR (VK9XOR) and Claudina EC5BME (VK9XME). Yes, a woman on a DXpedition, should be more of it. The team are also offering an award if you manage to contact all four of the operators.

I'm just glad for their sakes they aren't going later in the year. November, December is when the Christmas Island red crabs migrate.