Post date: Oct 31, 2015 6:49:40 AM

This activity was cancelled and is retained here for historical purposes.

Over the past month or so both Allen VK6XL and I have spoken about a planned DXpedition to the Cocos Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean next year.

Before you say to yourself, "that's not for me", "I don't know enough", "I cannot do that", let me take a moment to talk about what we're planning and why your skill level should not be the first concern.

First of all, it's a year away. We plan to be on Cocos for the last weekend in September and the first weekend in October. Keen contesters will know that those weekends are not random. The first one is the CQ World Wide RTTY contest and the second one is the Oceania DX SSB contest.

So, you'd need to learn to do RTTY - guess what, so do I - you'd need to learn to work a pile-up, guess what, everyone has to learn that at some point in their life, and we have a few skills in that area. Of course this is an island in the middle of nowhere. We'll be activating it as an IOTA station as well, have a school visit, meet the locals, put on a barbie, be sociable and have fun.

We're working on an individual budget estimate of $2100. That's two weeks on a tropical island, playing with radios, going fishing, touring, swimming and having fun. If the group gets big enough, the price is likely to come down thanks to the magic of group bookings.

Of course we'll have to deal with logistics and planning, we need people to do stuff like take photos and do catering, deal with logging, etc., etc.

At the moment we're looking for expressions of interest. Perhaps you'd like to come and bring a friend and use it as an excuse for a wonderful holiday, perhaps you'd like to learn what is involved with such an adventure, perhaps there is some other aspect of this adventure that we've not even thought of.

Check out the website, dxpedition.itmaze.com.au, that's like spelling the word expedition, but replacing the first letter with a d for delta.

Don't be shy, it's open to all, though we would prefer licensed amateurs, since that's sort of the point.

Check it out, dxpedition.itmaze.com.au or click the link in the news section on the vk6.net website.