TO7BC, Mayotte Island, AF 027

Mayotte,

 located between Mosambik and Madagaskar, is a French overseas department since March 31st, 2011 – like Guadeloupe (FG), Martinique (FM), French Guyana (FG), St. Pierre et Miquelon (FP) and Réunion (FR). The island is about 375 km² big and had in 2007 about 187.000 inhabitants. The capital Mamoudzou is located on the biggest island Grande Terre, whereas the international airport Dzaoudzi is located on the smaller island Petite Terre.

My friend DH1BL Bruno of Freiburg has taken over in 2010 a 4 years’ assignment at a school on Mayotte and is active under his call FH4VOS. He invited me to visit him on the island, which of course I appreciated very much.

The QTH of Bruno is located in the center of the main island about 120m asl. Of course I wanted to use my stay on the island also for amateur radio – sitting one more time on the other side of the pile-up. The station of Bruno consists of a 5-band-Spiderbeam for 10 to 20m.
I intented to use my travel-equipment IC7000, linked to HamRadioDeluxe and DigitalMaster 780 as I wanted to be QRV in DigiModes as well. To build up a 40m Triple Leg, I took with me a 10m aluminium mast with a Spiderbeam 12m fiberglass mast as extension.

After a long and tiring journey from Basel over Amsterdam and Nairobi I reached Mayotte on March 20th – without any luggage – this one was heading on to the next stop of the aircraft in Moroni, Comores. So I stood there without any clothes and radio equipment… By luck my 3 luggages were sent back to Mayotte the same evening by another airline and I was “complete”.

In the first night I tried ot for the first time PSK31 – FH/DL7BC was on the air. After 11 QSOs however my IC7000 started to act funny – switching off and on again automatically. All trials with a different power supply and other stuff didn’t help, so I gave up. By luck I was host of a radio amateur, so I continued with Bruno’s FT920 – but without connection to my laptop DigiModes were not possible any more. After my return to DL I found out, that in the original Icom power supply cable the fuse holder was melting and caused a voltage loss. If I just would have discovered this earlier…

On March 21st I set up the 40m Triple Leg, first trials were successful. All in all however just a few QSOs, even though e.g. one VK station was answering my CQ call.

With just 100W it was quite difficult to work simplex, espcially after being spotted on the cluster. As soon as the pile-up got to big, I started to work split to keep my calling frequency clear of QRM.

From March 23rd on I used the special call TO7BC which had been assigned to me for 14 days. Expectedly a lot of questions “what country” were asked – many OM turned their antennas first to the Carribeans, as most of TO calls are operating from there only.

It’s contest-time – on March 24th/25th the CQ-WPX was on. I was very disappointed about my result on 20m, just 88 QSOs on this band. Even stations which I could copy with S9+20dB didn’t come back to my call. On the other side the conditions on 10m were great on my side – 1.212 QSOs were in the log at the end. All in all 1.504 QSOs and about 3.300.000 claimed points were the final result – I had expected something more than that however.

For March 28th Bruno had initiated a practical demonstration of amateur radio at his school. A W3DZZ was hung up for this purpose. As in the morning hours the conditions for DX were very poor already during the previous days, we contacted some hams on FR (Réunion) island ans asked them to be on the air for the big event. It then worked out very fine, and some of the students could ask their questions to a few FRs and even one 3B8 station. Team member at the school was Phill, FH8NX. Around noon time, a small team of the local TV statioin dropped in and turned a short film about the activity. Bruno gave an interview about the project, and I was asked about my ham activity on Mayotte. In the evening we were on the air – in the TV news 😉

As I wanted to see a little bit of the island, I was not QRV each and every day Some pictures taken during my sightseeing tours can be seen further down.

The last station in the log was RX6CC on April 4th at 09:00 UTC. The same afternoon we went back to the neighbouring island Petite Terre, were we met Phill FH8NX for a nice dinner and overnight stay at his home. On March 7th the nice time on Mayotte island was over, and back home I went via Nairobi and Paris to DL.

Some statistics:
total 5.865 QSOs, thereof….
… 2.737 on 10m
… 795 on 12m
… 1.278 on 15m
… 561 on 17m
… 473 on 20m
… 21 on 40m
… 5.854 QSOs in SSB
… 11 QSOs in PSK31
… 142 DXCC-countries
> 803 QSOs – K
> 768 QSOs – IK
> 723 QSOs – DL
> 410 QSOs – UA3
> 281 QSOs – EA
. > 257 QSOs – F
> 223 QSOs – UT
> 206 QSOs – SP
> …. (unfortunately only 14 JA stations, here I hoped for much more)
… 4.381 QSOs – Europe
… 902 QSOs – Northamerica
… 166 QSOs – Central and South America
… 286 QSOs – Asia
… 119 QSOs – Africa
… 25 QSOs – Australia/Oceania

Some impressions from my stay on Mayotte:

Baobab trees on the beach

Mount Choungui in the south of the island Sunset in Tsingoni

geckos can be found everywhere …. … and lizzards, too

maki in the garden… … and on Bruno

 

hanging around all day long, or flying

Flying Foxes

traces of turtles on the beach

ham-radio activity in the school of Bruno – the local TV-station is there…

the dream of every island-operator – the call in the sand 😉

FH8NX Phill, Bruno FH4VOS and me FH/DL7BC and TO7BC

me with my luggage prior departure