NEWS UPDATE – 5T3WW QSL cards are now printed and ready to be sent.

DECEMBER 4, 2020 – The following text, written by Dima RA9USU / 5T3WW is reproduced here. Credit also to Dima for the pictures. 

It was an exciting adventure with Johannes PA5X / 5T5PA, who hosted me at his station in Nouadibou, Mauritania. Never operated the SO2R before (except @K1TTT back in 2005, when I used N1MM for the last time and a single computer in RDXC), so that was a hell of an experience (failed though). Somehow I need to make the TX audio to stop, otherwise, it’s impossible to concentrate on RX. Just tried all the possibilities to shut down that “self-monitor” in Icom-9100 and failed.

We had rearranged the 5T5PA station for SO2R and used N1MM for software interlock (too late to find out that multipliers have a separate window, not just band map). The next achievement was creating an absolutely autonomous beverage system. Reception in the middle of the city was impossible. Noise levels well over S9. Solar charged, radio linked to the station. Used Flex 6300 with two BOG (the US – 300 meters and EU -200 meters). Both being twice partially stolen and restored (used transformer copper wire 0,5 mm). Too bad did not take into account the RF capabilities of Ubiquity. Most likely I blew the RX in the local part of the link and lost connection for the second and third nights. Couldn’t restore it, as the link was just too unstable. Something to work out in the next operations. Two verticals were added (40m and 80m on the remote building).

Thanks to everyone who gave me multipliers and jumped with me through the bands. Expert 1.3KFA-ATU was a good choice for a multi-station. Still need to learn to operate with both radios simultaneously. 5T3WW was a shock to some stations and almost every multiplier call was a nightmare. People just didn’t get used to being called by 5T..had to repeat several times even to those stations, which were already worked on the other bands.

The contest finished by 00:00 and by 05:00 everything was packed and after a small 600km ride, I was already in Nouakchott airport. Something went wrong with the airplane, which had an emergency landing in Morocco, being re-routed directly to Dakar, Senegal, and then picked us up in Mauritania on the way back after a slight 9 hours delay. So I missed my flight to Moscow.

The worse thing was that I needed to be in Siberia on December 2nd to get to my mom’s 70th birthday. Needless to say that after many polite conversations and re-routes I jumped to the Siberian plane 30 minutes before the departure. Just to be able to get back home to Moscow today. Phew…

Thanks to Johannes for arranging everything and being an amazing host! It is amazing how life put you in touch with people during DXpeditions and I would also like to thank Zorro JH1AJT for introducing me to Johannes during our E31A operation last year.

NOVEMBER 25, 2020 – Mystery operator revealed! Hello Dima, RA9USU 👍

As per the tweet from Johannes 5T5PA:

PS: A reminder to get in touch during the contest with your pictures 🙂