There is a major change in the planning of the DXpedition. Here is the bottom-line.
We expect that our first radio operations will start a couple of days later than expected. Hopefully during the weekend of April 2nd. Reason for this is that the container, that carries our antennas and other stuff that we need for the station (our food&water supplies and generators), is still in the customs-process. We expect that the customs will not release the container until 4th of April! Last Thursday March 24th we evaluated the situation and the team have decided to go for plan B.
So whats plan B? Plan B is that on Friday March 25th we redesigned a new minimal antenna-farm that we can take with us on the plane. We decided that we will take 3 fiberglass verticals that will bring us on the air on 40m √ 10m. Sorry, no verticals available for the low bands and no RX-antennas during the first phase. Still food, water and electricity are a problem. We will have to figure this out when we are in Freetown on the hospitalship Africa Mercy next week. During that week we will also work on Mercy Ships projects as volunteers. As soon as the material arrives we will concentrate on the Low Bands, using beams and Receiving arrays.
So we will be on the air from Sierra Leone soon, but the exact starting date is still unknown. We will inform you about our proceedings via our website, Twitter and the DX-cluster. Stay tuned!
73,
9L5MS - Sierra Leone DXpedition team.
