Thank you everyone

I’m writing these words now the entire team is safe back in Mauritius. Of course our very first priority has been to give news to our family after 2 weeks without any exchange.

The team is quite tired after such an intense adventure, but we are very satisfied. After months of preparation everything goes as planned, result of so much work and a flawless organization. Of course, we will study statistics in detail, but we are quite satisfied by the overall results. Many have been able to log Saint Brandon as a new DXCC. Other people have filled one or more bands/modes slots. Our team was quite small with only 8 peoples, for a short duration of 10 days, managing food, maintenance, and the radio, better say immediately we haven’t slept much!

We knew propagation was not at his best and it has been confirmed on the air. All days were different giving various openings. High bands only gave propagation to Europe, Japan and Africa. The final repartition of QSO is the perfect reflect of this reality. Our efforts oriented to the most difficult areas helped to balance the different percentage by continent.

From a global point of view, Europe and Japan had the best conditions on all bands. Regarding America, we had not to miss any opening and pay a very special attention to maximize chances. This was one of our main priority. Daily information from our pilot’s stations helped us to adapt our strategy and identify some short openings with VK-ZL or SA for example.

We have received so many emails from you. All of them confirm your satisfaction, thank you so much for these kind words. Like for every expedition a few of them mention too fast cw, too slow cw, too much rtty, not enough ft8, missed openings, etc. The most interesting comments will be part of our debriefing and will help us to improve our strategies for any possible future project. We have now left Saint Brandon with the confidence of the “accomplished mission”, accordingly with our announced objectives.

After Tromelin and Juan de Nova we have now discovered another great island. “L’ile du Sud” is home for very important wildlife in the Indian Ocean. We have been lucky privileged spectators during these few days: Turtles, Macoua, Sternes, rabbits, etc. We gave a very special attention so our mission does not disturb wildlife at all by choosing carefully the location of each antenna or cable, watching at each move around the island. Our previous experiences have been a great advantage. We have also met some interesting people on the island: coast-guards, fishermen, a globe-trotter.

Then, certainly the most important point, the team has been incredible one more time, working like one man, with countless effort from the first to the very last minute. The human experience has been outstanding and will remain in our memories. None of us imagine a final end of our team, but this will certainly be another story…

Our first thanks are of course for our families for their continuous support. Thanks to all of you for your personal of clubs/foundations donations, they are a condition to make such projects possible. The quality of the equipment provide by some sponsors also had a major role to provide strong signals, reliable setups corresponding with our needs. The SunSDR2 pro by Expert Electronics have really been a game changer for us. All the team get familiar with them very easily and we cannot imagine a new project without them, associated with our Modmics provided by PileupDX they were just perfect. The antenna parts was one more time supported by Spiderbeam. The different RX systems were by DXengineering, Low Band Systems and Batima. Then everything was connect by our lightweight high performance coaxial cables by Messi and Paoloni.

Special thanks also to: F6AGM, LU5FF, ON9CFG, N6PSE, JJ3PRT, F8DQL, F4DSE, DX AVENUE, K6TU, VOACAP, QSL Concept, Raphael Fishing, E-Sat, for their support.

This final version of the Log has now being uploaded on clublog as well as the complete photo album of the expedition. OQRS will soon be open so you can request your QSL card. We strongly recommend to use this system for you direct or buro request, we don’t need your paper cards. LOTW will also be uploaded in the coming weeks.

73’s de F5UFX Seb, for the entire team.

3B7A QRT, VA