C5WW : The Gambia

After my Djibouti assignment, I went home. My grandfather was not well, and soon passed away at the age of 98.
After his funeral, I went on to The Gambia where I teamed up with my colleague John the Ozzie.
We did another office upgrade and training session during a ten day mission.
[after working nearly a decade for the UN, this mission turned out to be the last one]

The Gambia is one of the poorest countries in the world, yet people are all smiles most of the time. Tourism is a major income for the nation, and one can find lots of beautiful places and hotels to stay.
Ham radio is well known in the PTT office, and it is very easy to get a license as a foreigner. The PTT authority deals very swiftly with licensing requests, hats off !
Wildlife is gorgeous, no wonder so many tourists visit this beautiful and friendly country !

My last day, just before departure to the airport, I managed to meet most of the C5Z multi-multi team members.
Through Henryk SM0JHF they found an excellent spot right at the beach, where once the radiowaves of Radio Syd were aired.
This broadcast station is no longer on air, the C5Z team played around in the sand and built a multi-multi station from scratch.

In a week's time 5,115 QSOs were made during my spare time in the early mornings, evenings and a weekend.

You can do a log search right here :

C5WW
Callsign:


Click on the photographs to see the full size pictures.

Radio SYD, a Gambian broadcast station, was located in this house, until its tower was swept away during a storm.
Henryk SM0JHF found this location, which would host the C5Z multi-multi effort during the CQWW SSB 2003 contest

Visiting the C5Z gang 2 hours before my departure back to Dubai. l-r : N6VI-K6JL-ON4WW-N6ZZ-N6AA-SM0JHF
Part of the C5Z team is inspecting Radio Syd's old tower. C5Z however would use vertical antennas on the beach
C5WW in some sparse SSB activity
Nice little church
Entering downtown Banjul
A shopping street
Market place
Great weather, great sea, makes for great holidays for tourists !
Seaside stroll with colleague John
And this was our joyful office driver, always cheerful and willing to help

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