UPDATE – Now QRV from Tidra Island until December 5th..and an update by Jean, 5T0JL:
I had the immense pleasure of giving the road departure to the island of TIDRA to our friends 5T2AI (9K2AI) / Ahmad and UA4HWX / SU9VB / 5T9VB / Wladimir on morning 01 December 2016 towards 1000Z.
Tidra will be of interest to all IOTA hunters and is also an old story for me as it makes years we speculated ON5GA / Adriano, myself and the Radio Club of Europe to mount a DXPed on the islands as they are a few in the past never or rarely activated. The time passing-by and the physical form have somewhat impeded our momentum.
It was then that Wlodek / SP6EQZ was also thinking about it in January 2014, also in March 2015. Our old friend Phil / G3SWH of 5T0CW also spoke of Tidra in April 2015 and also my presentation at the whole new guy in town 5T2AI / Ahmad who found the project interesting in competition with an expedition to the The Eye of Africa still in 5T (All this confirmed by the many emails in my possession).
Then I do not remember which way Ahmad introduced me Wladimir / SU9VB which in turn seemed to show an interest in the Banc d’Arguin. I therefore initiated the proceedings with the protecting authorities of the Banc, then taken over by Ahmad, to finally end-up at this DxPed long awaited which remained 100% private between three people.
5T5TI operated by Ahmad or Vlad, it is according to the chosen shifts. Vlad is an excellent CW op, also on RTTY and SSB and Ahmad very good op on SSB! The conditions will be with 30 to 90 watts of Pwr with wired slopers all bands from 7 to 28 Mhz, 80m and 6m not certain. 160m has not been considered.
Survival conditions will be very harsh on the spot both for operation as well for resting and meals. So I’ll stay here at 5T0JL in emergency support since there is no other way apart from SatPhone.
Important! It is strongly requested to satisfy yourself with ONE MODE CONTACT in order to please the pushing crowd !!! Many thanks in appreciation for your fair-play and discipline.
December 1, 2016 — Details are still scarce, but the callsign 5T5TI recently appeared on the QRZ.com database with perhaps Vlad UA4WHX and Ahmad 5T2AI about to be active from the rare Tidra Island AF-050.
