Preparations

Operating from Tanzania may be a dream, but I am going to give it a try. First, I decided to obtain the license ahead of my arrival by contacting the Tanzania Amateur Radio Club in Dar Es Salam. Mr Hidan Ricco (5H3HO) is the secretary of the organization and offered to do the leg work for the license. I tried to do a bank wire transfer to the club account, but there are so many constraints on banks transferring money, that is impossible. You can wire money through Western Union, but the recipient must go to WU and identify themselves to get the money. This done, I e-mailed an image of my passport and U.S. amateur license toe Mr. Ricco and off he went. I sent all of this off in April and heard nothing from Tanzania for couple of months. Finally on the 7th of September I received the e-mail that the license was ready. Turns Mr. Ricco was dragging his feet because all licenses expire on June 30th each year. Each ham must renew each year for about $10 fee to the Tanzanian Communication Regulatory Authority. Since I was arriving in September, there was no reason to get the license before 1 July and have to renew it immediately. It pays to have someone in the country coordinate the license like this. I decided to test some antenna configurations and came upon the G5RV mini dipole in hopes of running 10, 15 and 20 meters when conditions allow.. In addition, I found a MJF tuner at a hamfest and off we went. The G5RV is nice and compact, but doesn't tune the WARC bands well, so I may have to build a dipole for some of the WARC frequencies if that comes down to that. I am using the Yaesu FT-897D that seems very durable. It is in my suitcase so we will see what happens. I plan to purchase a car battery and charger. Since the power is interrupted often, running with the battery may give me an opportunity to run even when the lights are out. I got a donated HP laptop from Doug, N0NAS. He also gave me the parts for an audio interface. The donated HP will go to the Tanzania Radio Club and Mr. Ricco. I installed Ham Radio Deluxe and WXTrack on the computer and set up HRD to use CAT commands to the club's radios through the USB to serial connection or Serial connector on the back of the radio. I also installed the ARRL handbook and ARRL antenna handbook on the the laptop. My laptop is set to run the 897 through the USB to serial cable to the CAT connector on the radio. At first HRD would stop almost immediately when I issued CAT commands, but found that HRD had to be installed at the root of the C: disk. Once done, HRD worked well. I also tested MixW and some other digital software. All works well. I must say that HRD is far too complex for human consumption. There are so many options that it is hard to get them all coordinated to work. Once I figured how the various modules coordinate, things went smoothly. Don't play with HRD until you have lots of time to try all the options.. Finally, I disassembled all of this and bagged up the wires into two zip locks: one for the club and one for me. I brought some QSL cards along and set them in each of the zip locks so that if there any questions, they know who owns the radios. The antenna, tuner and radio are all packed away in my suitcases. So now let's see what happens when we get to Tanzania!