IN MEMORIAM DXpedition of the legendary ZA1QA activation (in 1991)

for remembering our friends and excellent radio operators.

HA0NNN- Jani and HA0MM- Győzi

vy 73

from the ZA20QA team:

ZA1G-Fatos, HA0DU-Steve, HA0MK-Imi, HA0LC-Joe and HA0NAR-Laci

QSL manager is: HA0NAR

The ZA2ØQA story

Twenty years ago, in 1991, shortly after the political changes, which ended the decades of communism in Albania, a number of European aid organizations started providing help to the poorest country of Europe. Among them was the Hungarian St. Lazarus Quick Aid Foundation, led by rev. István Úsz. The managing director of the Foundation was János Bolyóczki, HAØNNN. He and Győző Macsuga HAØMM traveled to Tirana, Albania with a shipment of medical equipment in September 1991. They were granted one of the first amateur radio licenses in Albania – ZA1QA in recognition of the aid provided by the Foundation. They were active through the end of October, 1991, making several trips with more shipments of hospital equipment and medicines. Three more operators visited and operated ZA1QA in October, 1991, HAØMK Imi, HAØNAR Laci and HAØDU Steve. The group also took part in the ZAØRS M/M operation in the CQWW DX Phone Contest 1991. The team have also left transceivers and HF antennas for the Albanians to continue ham radio activity ont he air. So far a happy story.

János HAØNNN was killed in 1992 at the age of 26 in a traffic accident on his way to Albania with Isao JH1ROJ, who fortunately was not hurt bad. Győző HAØMM died in 2008 at the age of 50. They were very good friends of us and excellent contesters/radio operators.

In 2011, the rest of the ZA1QA operators decided to go back to Albania for a commemorative operation for our lost friends. We were joined by Joe HAØLC, a long-time friend and business partner of Győző. The operation was planned for October 2011, exactly 20 years after ZA1QA was on the air.

Due to business and family commitments, the operation was shortened, and we left Debrecen, Hungary in the evening of Monday, October 24th by car. We carried a SteppIR vertical for 40-10 meters, a 18m fiberglass pole with an MFJ tuner for low bands, a K9AY receiving antenna, and a 5 element DK7ZB Yagi for 6 meters. An FT-847 and two FT-857 were also placed in the trunk. After driving 17 hours straight, we arrived to Tirana on Tuesday afternoon. We met our hosts Fatos ZA1G and Edmond ZA1U in the outskirts of Tirana. We drove to the Ministry of Sports, Youth and Culture, where we were welcomed by the Minister.

After the reception we drove South to the village of Orikum, our operating site. Already on the way from the Z3/ZA border (Lake Ohrid) we saw that the country has changed a lot, but when we drove from Tirana to Vlore through Durres, the view just took our breath. We think we only saw so many building machines in exhibitions before. There is a completely new country! When we drove the same route – a bumpy, narrow road - twenty years ago, we only saw hundreds of the Albanian „mini-bunkers” (see Wikipedia for their story) and batteries of guns under camouflage nets (not really hidden, though). Today both sides of the wide 2x2 lane road look like we were in Italy, hundreds of office buildings, thousands of companies and hotels, and 2-3 filling stations every mile or so…

The arrival to Orikum, however, brought some more surprises. We were guided to a large apartment complex, and we were told we will be on the 6th floor. Now this was not quite the seaside location we asked for. The sea was some 300 meters away. It was about 11pm local, so we decided to take our clothes to the room and stay overnight – we were on the road for more than 24 hours, so we needed some sleep. Our hosts told us this was the only possible accomodation, but the whole building is empty, so nobody will disturb us, and we will disturb nobody. We went to bed and posponed the decision to stay or to search for a better location.

The next morning we went to the roof and found that we are in a bay, surrounded by hills on three sides. The only open direction was North. It seemed if we go to the beach we will not be better off. So we decided to stay and started installing antennas. A SteppIR vertical, a 18 meters tall fiberglass pole with a legal limit MFJ 998RT tuner, a K9AY receiving loop and a 5 element Yagi for 6 meters on a 6 meter telescopic mast, were installed on the Northern end of the roof of the 7-story building. Everything looked fine, until we went back to our room. The first transmitted signal on the SteppIR killed the preamp in the K9AY. Then we discovered that all metallic parts of the main station were „hot” when we transmitted on the 18m vertical. A quick check showed that there was about 50 Volts on the chassis of the power supply, and the protection relay occasionally went off. Further investigation showed that the protective earth was not connected well in the outlet we used for the rigs. We fixed it and the 50 Volts were gone, but all metallic parts were still hot when transmitting. It seemed that we were just too close to our antennas.

About 45 minutes before moonset we tried 6 meters EME with Lance W7GJ, but it was new moon and we did not copy anything. We also found that the hills to the West were not too high, so we lost moon at about 4.3 degrees, which was already too low anyway, being far from the sea.

The next morning (Thursday) the lucky man (HA0DU) ran the endless pileups on 10 meters, while the rest of the team went back to the roof with new ideas for another warm day. They moved the 18 m vertical to the Eastern side of the roof, as far from the station as possible. It did not help. We also had a lot of problems using the MFJ tuner. Without proper grounding (better say, without any grounding) the unit did not work properly on 160 meters, and was unreliable on 80 meters, thus by the end of the day we knew we have to create antennas for 160 and 80.

On Thursday we learnt that the Bulgarian team, which was supposed to operate a few kilometers from us, was unable to enter Albania with the antennas and radios, although they had proper licensing documents. We exchanged messages with Andy LZ2HM via Skype and we felt lucky that nobody even asked about the content of our trunk on the borders. (Except the nice lady at the Hungarian customs, who saw the fiberglass poles on the roof of the car and asked if we were going fishing… We said no, windsurfing, madam. She let us go – and probably thought we were crazy and/or tough, windsurfing in October.)

And then came Friday. New plans again. Fortunately Laci HAØNAR brought his „emergency wire GP”, so we took the 18 m vertical down, we took the useless remains of the K9AY loop down, and installed the 14 MHz GP on the fiberglass pole of the K9AY. We built a half-wave dipole for 15 meters, and a quarter-wave twin sloper for 80 and 160, which we hung from the NW corner of the building to the grassy area in front of us. Then we went shopping for the contest weekend. It was quite interesting to see the changes in the grocery stores, compared to 20 years ago. Then the grocery stores were mostly empty, no bread or milk, nothing. We ate the canned food we brought from Hungary, and bought bread from a „dealer” for inner tubes for bicycles! Now we saw at least twenty foodstores on the main street of Orikum, and all of them were loaded with good food. Twenty years ago the only spirit we could buy (on the black market) was Ouzo, now the shelves were full with all kinds of QSO-wasser. We prefered the Pi-water brought by Imi HAØMK, though.

At moonset on Friday we copied K2ZD with -22 dB on 6 meters EME, but unfortunately he did not copy us, so the first ever 6m EME QSO is yet to be made. (Wednesday and Thursday evening we worked about 15 stations on 6 meters, mostly JT6M.)

Friday evening we were supposed to go out for dinner with our hosts ZA1G and ZA1U, but they ran into some traffic problems and were late, they arrived when Joe HAØLC tried to install the N1MM software on my laptop. Originally we had two laptops pre-installed, but one of them showed high sensitivity to HF, so it has to be replaced. We also had a promise to our JA friends that we will be on 160 meters CW before the contest, so Friday night we had to test the antenna anyway. The antenna was cut for 1840 kHz, so I had to transmit on 1835, but listening on 1822 We copied about ten JA’s plus KH2 and VK – quite difficult without a receiving antenna. Also worked a few UAØ’s before going QRT for the last team meeting.

Supposedly we were the only multioperator station in Albania, so we had a free choice of M/S, M/2 or M/M – we were going to win the country title. Our technical problems, however, prevented us from running on two bands in the same time (plus the 80/160 antennas were fed with the same coax), so we decided to go multi-single. We formed two sub-teams: LC-MK and NAR-DU. By 22:30 UTC on Friday the two laptops were in a network and everything was ready to go, except the operators. We all had an exhausting day and still, one of the two sub-teams had to do the first stint. There were no volunteers… Finally just a few minutes before the start Laci and Steve sat down to the stations and soon we were in the contest. We had pretty good runs despite our simple antennas and low power, but there were very few DX stations calling us on the low bands. From the beginning we tried to move multipliers from one band to the other and vica versa, but not being able to run on 80 or 160 and pick up mults on the other band was another drawback.

By 0700 UTC of Saturday we had the first 1000 QSO’s, and we passed the microphones to the LC/MK pair, and so on… The first day we logged 3000 contacts, but without directional antennas we had to struggle for every multiplier, especially on 15 and 10 meters. Not having a big signal also meant that our frequency was „stolen” several times, someone with a Yagi started CQing on our freq and we were out. The last five hours of the contest were slow, as we tried to work new multis. We ended up with over 5,400 QSO’s and a new Albanian record, but obviously we were not even close to the average European M/S contest stations’ score. Our DX ratio was only about 25%, and we only worked about 720 multipliers total (zones+countries combined). Our assumption that we do not need a CQ machine, was absolutely wrong. Our best hour was 209, and especially on 20 and 40 we had to put out many hundred CQ’s, so all four of us had a nice hoarse voice after the contest.

Sunday morning in our „rest period” we dismantled the 6 m Yagi and packed all the unused antennas already, so on Monday morning we took down the „antenna farm” in about an hour, said goodbye to our hosts and we left Orikum at 11 am local. We spent Halloween night in the car, Joe drove almost non-stop and at 06 am on Tuesday we were back home.

This probably was not the most successful radio expedition, since we only made about 10K contacts in five days, but hopefully we made many people happy with a ZA QSO, we will make many happy with a nice QSL card (and LOTW credits), and most importantly, we saluted to the memory of our old friends Jani HAØNNN and Győzi HAØMM, who were definitely with us in these five days.

We would like to thank Fatos ZA1G for finding us an operating place and being our guide in Albania, to Edmond ZA1U, who bridged the language barriers and to Mr. Svihak the caretaker of the apartment house for letting us use the roof.

Special thanks to Minister David Maron for letting us know that our friends are also remembered in Albania. And last but not least, thanks to the Albanian people who were smiling, friendly and helpful, wherever we went, whatever we needed.

73 de ZA20QA team