PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Dan Brown

na7db@aliko.net

With great reserve, no fanfare, and no hype we are letting people in on the fact that we will be operating from the Spratly Islands as 9MØM during the first week of March. We are proud to be the first Central Arizona DX Association members to plan an UnDXpedition. According to Mike Bill, N7MB, "this is a first."

The UnDXpedition will have no more press releases until we return, and maybe not then. We could not find any pilots, no one understood satellite uplinking of logs, and nobody wanted to stick to any schedules. There will be no sponsors of our radios, coax, amplifiers, or T-shirts, because we couldn’t find any. All governments involved have taken a, "who are these people anyway?" attitude. We did try to contact the San Miguel Brewery, but they didn’t even call us back.

Some of the people going on this UnDXpedition are veterans of past Mega-operations but have decided to "tune in, turn on, and drop down", south with a couple of radio stations. Showing up on the airwaves from time to time will be: Sally, KM5EP; Dennis, AF7Y; Jerry, WB9Z; Luis, XE1L; Darryl, AF7O; and unindicted co-conspirators Dan, NA7DB and Mike, N7MB. Some of the above may enter the ARRL DX SSB Contest if they can figure out how to switch CT from the DX mode to the Contest mode.

We do appreciate the help we have been given by our friends, like Force 12, who have loaned us a couple of verticals to put out on the beach. And Singapore Airlines, who helped with great airfares and a much appreciated excess baggage wavier. We will operate from Sabah, Malaysia as 9M6DBT and 9M6MBT for a few days before and after we are on Spratly. We plan to operate CW and SSB on 80 through 10 meters. Any other modes will be at the discretion of the operator and please no whining!

We would like to work as many Dxers as possible so look for us on the usual DX frequencies. Thanks to Steve Thompson, N7TX we will have a web page with QSL and Propagation information. We are grateful to Andy W6/G4VPM for his help on the propagation. Dan, NA7DB, said "Andy’s information will let us know when to leave the poolside bar and get back on the radios." Please QSL the 9M6 calls via WN7J and the Spratly Island call of 9MØM via K7XN.