VU4AX Story

(IOTA AS-001) by Ronald Stuy PA3EWP
Spring 2023 the Belgium DX-Adventure team asked me to join them to the Andaman Islands. The Andaman and Nicobar archipel is situated south-east of India between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

I had never been on VU4 and many team members were friends, so my decision was quickly made.

At that moment they told me that the biggest issue would be the VU3 license, our planning was Spring 2024. We can write a complete book about getting a license in India, so I won’t bother you with the details. It took us 18 months before all team-members got their VU3-license. Luckily Francis ON8AZ, who was responsible for our licenses, had great perseverance otherwise we never got our license.

Our new plan became March 2025, one year later than originally planned.

Months before this adventure we prepared and tested all the equipment. Team members and support crew were working on this project. The preparation consists of:

– testing all antennas (TX and RX)

– configuring and testing all radios, amplifiers, computers

– test all bandpass filters, stubs and stops

– packing and documenting all suitcases and boxes

Previous DXpeditions were always near the capital Port Blair. The QRM level was always very high, so we were searching for a place away from the capital. We found The Andaman Sunset View Resort nearly an hour away from Port Blair and the west coast of South Andaman. It has not the best take off because the main directions to NA, JA and EU are across the Island but is very remote and has less chance for local QRM. We rented the complete resort, so we had no issues with other guests.

Our team consists of the members with a mixed (technical) knowledge and a lot of experiences about contesting and DXpeditions.

ON5UR – VU3PFE, Max, Team leader

ON8AZ – VU3OQP, Francis, Co Team leader

ON4AMX – VU3PFV, Marc, Team member

ON4HIL – VU3PFT, Patrick, Antenna setup

ON5RA – VU3PFF, Pascal, Team member

ON5TN – VU3FYS, Karel, Team member

ON6CC – VU3PFN, Marc, IT hardware + software

ON7FT – VU3PFH, Jonas, Team member

ON7USB – VU3PFQ, Geert, Team member

ON7RU – VU3PFJ, Franky, Propagation manager

PA3EWP – VU3PFI, Ronald, Club Sponsors

PA9M – VU3PFO, Marcel, Antenna setup

You can only request a special license 4 weeks before using it. In January 2025 we requested our VU4X license. Luckily, we received it very soon, in 1 week we got VU4AX instead of VU4X. We don’t know why they changed it. After some telephone calls Francis noticed that it would be an endless negotiation to change it. We decided to use VU4AX.

One of our next challenges was transporting all equipment to Andaman. Our plan was to operate from 2 shacks with each 3 radios. We would be active from 10-160 meters. We skipped 6 meters because our license was only valid for 25 watts FM. We discussed this with the license officer in India, but we didn’t receive any positive feedback/news. In total we had 45 suitcases with equipment, a total weight of 1.100 KG. We arranged with Air India that all operators could check in 4 pieces. A few weeks before our departure we got the message that it was not possible to check in 4 pieces of luggage from Calcutta to Port Blair. Max ON5UR contacted Air India and arranged 3 weeks before our departure a new flight plan. We had to cancel our tickets and booked new tickets from Paris => New Delhi => Port Blair. Now it was possible to bring all our equipment. We were grateful to our contact person at Air India for her cooperation, without her it would have been a bigger challenge.

Saturday 8^th of March we all joined at a large parking lot near Kortrijk, Belgium. We travelled by touring car to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. After checking in we flew to New Delhi India, we had 20 hours transit time, so we booked a hotel for the night. Next day, we had to get up very early to fly to Port Blair. We arrived at Port Blair and were happy all our luggage made it too. From the airport we went to our resort by minibus. Monday afternoon we arrived at the resort. After a quick investigation of the area, we started assembling the antennas. We had only a few hours left before it went dark. All team members knew what to do but it took more time than expected, especially with the high temperature, 35 degrees Celsius. (We left Belgium just above freezing point). During the evening, we installed most of the equipment in the shacks. The next morning at sunrise we continued assembling the antennas and radio setup. A few hours later we started operating on the higher bands. Only the low band antennas needed a few hours more to finish.

We had 2 shacks with 3 complete stations up and running. We used identical setups: 6 Elecraft K3 and 6 SPE Expert 1.3KW amplifiers. All stations were networked by N1MM+ and we had an uplink to Clublog for life log checking. For the low bands we had dedicated stations, otherwise we had to switch the receiving antennas and de 4-square for 40m. That would have been complicated. We would be operational for a maximum of 9 days. The first day one of the Expert amplifiers broke down. We had only 5 stations with high power left.

We used the following antennas:

Band	Antenna	Description
10-20m	Spiderbeam	10m from beach, + Triplexer
10-20m	Spiderbeam	On water tower, + Pentaplexer
15m	VDA	On beach LP NA
30m	Vertical	On beach
40	4-square	10m from beach
60	Vertical	On beach
80	Vertical	On beach
160	Vertical top loaded	On beach
RX	3 loops	Low bands EU, JA, NA
RX	Beverage	Low bands NA

We knew from the start that the east coast of North America was the most difficult part of the world to reach. That was one of the reasons we installed a 15m VDA on the beach via long path. The propagation was very poor, especially the first days. Looking at the propagation charts we called on different bands for NA, but no or very little response. Also, the noise level on all bands was extremely high, S3 was normal and some days it was even S5. This doesn’t help working the other side of the world.

Some days the propagation was so bad so we had 6 stations running FT8 for hours and even then, the QSO rate was rather low. No response in CW and/or SSB at all. This time the propagation was not our best friend.

We used 3 pilot stations on different continents, Björn ON9CFG, Peter W2IRT and Champ E21EIC. The pilot stations collected info from the DX community during our adventure. Franky ON7RU contacted daily the pilots for a summary update from the DX community.

We made 65.961 QSOs in 9 days. Our focus was on CW and SSB, if propagation was poor, we switched to FT8. The station without amplifier was running most of the time FT8. And a lot of times only 4-5 bands were open at the same time. Some RTTY QSO’s were made, only on 10 meters.

Mode	QSOs
CW	18.516
SSB	16.135
RTTY	516
FT8	25.273
FT4	5.521

One of our goals was to work as many NA as possible. All stations had a printed propagation chart. The operators were aware of possible openings. Many times, we stopped the pile-up to EU or AS try to work NA. But they were not audible because of poor propagation and/or high noise level. During our greyline most of the time we were on the low bands if the noise level was acceptable.

We had 4 hours shift during the day and in the evening/night 6 hours shift. In this case at least every 2 days you could sleep approx. 6 hours. But at the end of our DXpedition all operators were exhausted.

Wednesday afternoon we dismantled the 80m, 160m and RX antennas. Thursday morning after breakfast we started to dismantle all the antennas except the spider-beam. Before darkness the last antenna had to be taken down. We made our last QSO around 16.00 Lt and went QRT. All equipment had to be packed in the same suitcases. This was done to avoid possible issues at customs. They had stamped all our paperwork when we entered India. If they made random checks and found other stuff in the suitcase we could have some issues. When most of the equipment was packed, we had dinner for the first time with the whole team in the restaurant. Previous days we were always in 2 or 3 groups. We had some nice conversations and we drunk all the beer that was available (1 bottle each hi). On Friday 21^st of March at 05.00 Lt. we will be picked up by the minibus to go to the airport in Port Blair

Our journey back home went very well. Saturday afternoon we arrived in Kortrijk Belgium. Family and friends were waiting for us at the parking lot.

We would like to thank all our sponsors (DXclubs, companies and individuals) for their help to make this DXpedition a success. Especially our main sponsors of this DXpedition NCDXF, IndexA and our support crew in Belgium helped us a lot.