News

This year’s contest was a wild ride. One of our radios was dead on arrival, the amplifier failed early, and our 40m vertical snapped in the wind. It felt like everything that could go wrong did.

But we didn’t quit.

With backup gear, quick fixes, and a lot of teamwork, we pushed through the chaos. Despite the setbacks, we logged 4,500 SSB contacts—a result we’re proud of.

Day 2 on the Island – Progress & Challenges

We’ve made solid progress today: three WARC antennas are up and running, and the 5-Band Spiderbeam is fully assembled on the ground—ready to be raised tomorrow. 💪

Unfortunately, we’re facing some serious local QRN—S9+10 across the bands. After some investigation, we confirmed it’s not coming from our house, but it’s definitely affecting our RX. That’s why you might be seeing signal reports like -15…-20 on FT8, we’re doing our best to pull out the weak ones!

Also, a quick note: our livestream isn’t working due to issues with the local internet provider. We’ll keep trying, but for now, the log files will be uploaded every time we change the band on each particular radio.

Thanks for your patience and support—more to come soon!

73 de 5K0UA
Alex, Salim, Paul

We’re entirely self-funded, all equipment and resources are owned by the team members, – no commercial or club sponsorships are backing this dx-pedition.
Our goal is to provide as many new band slots and ATNOs as possible, and to log a wide variety of unique callsigns.
If you’d like to support our efforts, we truly appreciate direct contributions or via Club Log’s OQRS / Donate services.
Every bit helps, especially since we’ve taken on the full financial responsibility ourselves.
To make this happen, we’re hauling nearly 300 kg of radios, amplifiers, antennas, cables, and other gear — all of which comes with hefty airline luggage charges.
Your support goes a long way in helping us keep the signals strong and the log growing.

An international team of 7 operators is going to San Andres Island, Colombia in October 2025.

The team includes : Salim HK1T, Salome HJ1YL, Alex K2BB, Paul UU0JR, Oleg US7UX, Victor VA2WA, Alex WB2AA.

The team will be active on HF bands with a special focus on participation in the CQ World Wide SSB Contest.
Regular DX activity will take place before and after the contest period.

Hi all.

We have uploaded our complete log to LOTW today, April 1st 2020, for both calls – 5H3UA and 5H3EME.

All direct QSL cards, requested in February/March will be mailed in early April.

Also the clublog operation for 5H3UA / 5H3EME is transferred to our QSL manager – Nick UA3DX.

We are in a process of mailing direct QSLs to our sponsors and all of those who requested direct QSL via ClubLog OQRS system by February 1st. That’s a lot of cards to print and to keep our QSL manager busy for a couple of weeks.

Cards to expedition sponsors are in mail already, the rest of directs will be mailed by the end of February.

Clublog OQRS requests placed in February will be mailed mid-March.

One of expedition sponsors has already received his card and shared a picture of it.

Good news!

Our QSL is in print and we will start sending them by the end of this week. We decided to go with foldable card serving both calls – 5H3UA and 5H3EME. If you made a donation before the expedition – no need to use clublog OQRS, you will get a direct card with all your QSO.

We will have 2 EME stations – on 50 and 144 MHz

50MHz – one 8 element W7GJ yagi with elevation; RX – LNA, Elecraft K3 transceiver; TX – Burst 2000A solid state amplifier with more than a KW output on 50 MHz.

144 MHz – two 10 element RA3AQ cross-yagi with elevation; RX – LNA, Horizontal and Vertical polarization will go separately into dual channel Javornik II 144-28 transverter and then into dual channel Odyssey II SDR transceiver; TX – 1kW solid state amplifier by Paul UU0JR.

Location – eastern coast of Zanzibar island, KI93RV grid. Local time – UTC +3.

Scheduled arrival time to the spot is 10 local (07:00 Z) on November 16th. If stars align – we will be ready for moon rise by 22 local (19:00 Z)

An international team of 6 operators is going to Zanzibar Island, Tanzania in November 2019.

The team includes K2BB, NT2X, RT5D, US7UX, UT7UV and UU0JR.

We will use 2 callsigns. 5H3UA will be used for all HF operations, DX activities and for CQ WW CW contest. 5H3EME will be used for daily EME operations and for ARRL EME contest.

We will arrive to the island early morning Saturday November 16, set up low band and EME antennas to be ready for moon rise at 19:00Z despite pretty high moon degradation. 2M EME will last till moonset on Friday November 22. 6M EME will be taken down on Tuesday November 26. All antennas will be taken down on Wednesday November 27 and the team will depart Zanzibar on Thursday November 28.

We will focus on 160-80m bands. We will use verticals for 160-80-40-30m and 5-Band SpiderBeam for upper bands. We also planning to put a beverage for Europe and North America, both coming from the same direction.