QTH: Atauro Island, IOTA OC-232, Timor-Leste.

LATEST NEWS
The team members leave for Timor-Leste during the week beginning 12 September. Unfortunately, due to a late change of airline timetable, two members of the team will now not arrive in Timor-Leste before the afternoon of Friday 16 September and so the chartered boat taking us to Atauro Island has been rescheduled to later that afternoon. We had planned to have all four stations up and running shortly after nightfall (approx 1000UTC) on the 16th but that is now very unlikely. We will do our best to have one or two stations on the air around that time - but no promises!

We will start work to put up the remainder of the antennas at first light the next day, that is approximately 2115UTC on 16 September. 4W6A is then likely to be off the air for several hours until all the antenna work is completed. 

This delay is unfortunate but was completely outside our control. We should still be on the air in a limited way on Friday 16th, and with all four stations by the morning (UTC) of Saturday 17th.

Members of the 4W6A team have received many e-mails from DXers around the world keen to make a contact on all bands and modes. While we are very pleased to note the widespread interest in the 4W6A DXpedition, we would like to point out that we are not a 'mega-DXpedition' in the tradition of 3B7C, VP6DX or T32C! We are a small group of seven keen DXpedition operators and we have the possibility of operating a maximum of four stations simultaneously. This means we cannot possibly be on all bands at all times! If we are not on your favourite band and / or mode at your sunrise or sunset it is probably because we are on a different band working a different part of the world. We will be QRV for 10 days so we hope to find all the openings during that time - but we simply will not be able to exploit every band opening to each part of the world every day.

We look forward to having fun in the pile-ups and we hope you have fun chasing 4W6A. 73, The 4W6A Team

WHY ATAURO ISLAND?

Atauro Island was chosen in order to provide a quiet location, well away from the electrical noise of down-town Dili. The beach-front site will allow the group to put up vertical antennas right by the ocean, providing additional low-angle gain.

The island counts as OC-232 and is part of a rare IOTA group. However, this is not specifically an IOTA DXpedition, rather it is a DXCC DXpedition that happens to be from an IOTA island! We will therefore be operating on all bands from 160 to 10 metres and we encourage DXers to work us on each band / mode combination. We are aware that 4W is in very high demand on 160 and 80 metres in particular and we will try to give amateurs around the world a new DXCC band-mode counter on as many bands as possible.

Accommodation on Atauro Island is very basic and the team will be in beach huts with no mains electricity or running water. All power for the DXpedition will be provided using hired generators. The group is requesting donations to help to cover the cost of boat charter, generator hire and the high cost of fuel for the generators.

In the 2010 'DX Magazine' '100 Most Needed Countries' survey [Click Link & scroll down to view survey] conducted in September and October 2010, Timor-Leste was listed as the 46th 'most needed' country world-wide (mixed modes), up 14 places from 2009. That places 4W higher up the list than such rarities as Mellish Reef, Sable Island, Malyj Vysotskij (M-V Island), Clipperton Island and Syria.

In January this year, the ARRL released a list compiled by Bill Moore, NC1L, ARRL Awards Branch Manager, with the total number of entity credits submitted to DXCC (Mixed category) for each of the 338 current entities (the new PJ entities were not included). Timor-Leste was in 9th place, behind only North Korea, Saint Barthelemy, Swains Island, Scarborough Reef, Yemen, Montenegro, Chesterfield Islands and Pratas Island.

In the Club Log 'Most-Wanted' listing (February 2011) Timor-Leste was wanted by 67.46% of participants world-wide. Fewer than 10% world-wide had worked Timor-Leste on any particular band-mode combination except for 20m Phone, where the figure was 10.3%. On Datamodes the highest figure was just 3.9% (20m Data). On 80m and 160m, 1% or less had made a contact on any band-mode combination.

For Islands On The Air (IOTA) chasers, Atauro Island is part of the very rare Timor-Leste's Coastal Islands group, OC-232. This IOTA group has only been activated once before, by 4W6GH/P in July 2000, more than 11 years ago. Before 4W6A, OC-232 had been confirmed by only 17.9% of active IOTA participants.