DXPedition to Ibiza, the story

We are pleased to receive and publish the story of Alessandro, IZ4WNA and his DXpedition Holiday Style of this Summer. Alessio and his friend Giuliano, IZ4WNP were active from Ibiza Island, IOTA EU-004.

It all started when I asked myself why not use my holiday vacation in Ibiza to play a bit of radio and to activate that island? I obtained my hamradio license in the beginning of 2012 and since that I’ve hear lots of stations from EU-004 but none from Ibiza itself. I immediately exposed to my friend Giuliano, IZ4WNP, my idea and he was eager to be active from there as well.

The day before the departure we were shocked by the news of some OMs that encountered some problems with respect to lincensing. Our CEPT license were reported as “CEPT TR61-02″ instead of the needed TR61-01. After few initial moments of literally terror we managed to avoid this problem. The Telecummunication Ministry attached also the TR61-01 document but we almost forgot to have it. Problem fixed and we didn’t have any problem while we were operating in Ibiza.

In order attein to the luggage weight policies of the airline services (max 15kg each) we had to split our equipments into three luggages.One with the personal effects while the other two with the hamradio material comprehendingPCs for the logging programme and the digital modes, interfaces, coax cableas and all the testing material such as wattmeters and SWR meters, power suppliers and dipoles to cover 40, 80, 20, 15 and 10m.

Quite a lot of stuff !!!!!

We took off from Bologna at 10 o’clock and landed in Ibiza at midday after about two hours of flight. Our DXPedition QTH was a wonderful house with lots of room. Indeed, the best peculiarity of such a house was the amazing terrace facing the sea. Such a terrace had enough room to set up our stations and operate from there, enjoying the skyline while operating !

Using both SSB and PSK we managed to collect almost 400 QSOs in somewhat two days of operations. In fact we started on September the 7th and we flew back to Italy on September the 10th.

We tried to operate as much as we could in this first DXpedition. Our great passion and involvment with this hobby allowed us not to give up even in those moments in which we were tired or we had few time to operate.

It has really been a great experience. Only nine months ago we got licensed and now, we were on our very first DXPedition. We really hope to have helped as many hamradio operators as possible to gain a QSO with Ibiza. We’re already dreaming and talking about future plans. Thanks everybody, especially the CENTO DX TEAM for the assistance and the suggestions.

All logs have been updated into LoTW and eQSL, QSL via Bureau to Home Calls.