Dear DXers and friends of ham radio

During a scouting trip late last year, Bac Ai XV2A, the President of the Vietnamese Radio Amateurs Association, and I met personally with the island officials representing the military, People’s Committee and the telecom authorities. At this time, the structure and goals of the DXpedition were discussed, three operating sites were selected (headquarters/CW/SSB), the financial terms were worked out and a contract covering these activities was signed. With this information, Bac Ai then successfully applied for and obtained the 3W6C license with the national telecom authorities for operation at the three operating sites. We thought we had anticipated every contingency.

Upon our arrival on the island, we immediately started setting up our stations, including the Spiderbeams, 4 squares and verticals. Just as we were nearing completion of this stage, on the Monday of our first week, high-ranking provincial military and telecom authorities came from the mainland and made an inspection of the operating sites. The military was very surprised by the extensive scope of our activities and by the sophisticated antennas we had erected at what they still consider sensitive areas. They were extremely uncomfortable with our activities, especially given that Con Co Island is still categorized as a strategically important military outpost. They also determined that the local commander had overstepped his authority when he originally agreed to let us conduct our operations at the two remote sites.

As a result, the military instructed us to abandon the remote CW and SSB sites and restrict our activities to the headquarters area, which is located in the middle of a training area and where they could easily keep an eye on us. This was very disturbing because we had spent three exhausting days erecting sophisticated, efficient antennas at those two remote sites, and we were just about to begin 24-hour 2-station operation in CW and SSB. Instead, given the new constraints in terms of available space and the time available to us to construct and erect antennas – we had to get back on the air as quickly as possible and make contacts – we were forced to cut the number of stations in half (one CW and one SSB), operate with antennas that were not nearly as efficient as those we had previously set up and give up any hope of low-band operating. Over time we attempted to set up some better antennas but were again hindered in this effort. We ended up working with several “3W6C multiband vertical dipoles”.

In conclusion, given that Con Co Island consists almost entirely of a military outpost, we can first of all say that we were extremely fortunate to have been permitted to operate on Con Co Island in any form at all. We followed all the official procedures we were told were necessary to conduct our DXpedition. However, the military felt uncomfortable with the scope of our activities and instructed us to scale back our operations considerably. Under the circumstances, we did the best possible job and even so were able to make just under 20,000 contacts around the globe.

We cooperated with the authorities to the fullest extent and conducted ourselves with the greatest possible diplomacy so as to leave a positive impression of ourselves, our home countries and ham radio and hopefully make it possible for future amateur-radio operations to take place from this QTH.

Vy 73 de Hans-Peter, HB9BXE