Post date: Dec 31, 2008 3:33:18 PM
With less than a week remaining before the long trek to Luderitz, things are still progressing well and remain pretty much on track.
Dave, N7BHC will be leaving North Carolina in the U.S. and is expected to arrive in Johannesburg late in the morning on Friday, the 2nd. After a brief business meeting near the airport he plans to drive to Pretoria for an initial planning meeting with ZS6OB, ZS6WB and hopefully ZS6JR to discuss several logistics issues that still need to be decided.
On the afternoon of the 3rd Dan, HB9CRQ will return to Johannesburg from his game park holiday, will stay overnight near the Johannesburg airport and join the rest of the group in Pretoria the following morning.
The loss of several team members has made it necessary to modify some of the original trip planning. We will plan to disassemble, pack and load the antenna arrays on the 4th. As neither Dan or Dave have yet seen the antenna systems in the assembled state, having their help in both disassembly and reassembly will make things go a lot faster after we arrive in Luderitz.
There are still a few loose ends that need to be taken care of before we leave that had to wait for shops to reopen on the 5th after the holidays, so the present planning is now for an early morning departure on Tuesday morning, the 6th of January. This will put us one day behind schedule for the start but should have little overall impact on the DXpedition.
Based on a two day drive and one full day to assemble at least part of the equipment, we should be pumping out some RF on the 9th of January.