Living in Madagascar, I have enjoyed operating from a sought after DXCC entity; little did I suspect the same would be true on my recent trip to Europe. I packed along the FT817 on a trip to Nice, France, where I attended a business meeting. I had picked a hotel with an open 8th floor deck and hoped to string up the end-fed to operate in the evening. On the way out the door, my wife asked me, “so I don’t suppose you’ll have any time to visit Monaco, while you’re there?” I have to admit that I hadn’t really thought about it, but as soon as she mentioned it, the gears began turning. I had meetings in Nice and Lyon, but some free time on Saturday before flying out. On the way to the airport, I double checked that Monaco was a signatory to the CEPT convention.
I arrived in Nice near sunset, picked up my conference registration materials, and walked to the water. It’s winter, but the temp was near 15C and sunny, so I walked along the Promenade des Anglais and checked out the beach. In principle, one could string a wire from the wall near the sidewalk down to the beach, but it would be hemmed in on all sides except to the southwest. Continuing eastward, the sidewalk becomes the Quai des États-Unis and leads to the base of a 90 meter hill surmounted by an historic castle. Since light was fading, I took the elevator to the top of the hill (the shaft is the former well that served the castle, le puits du diable) and wandered around the park at the top. The park spans both sides of the hill and there is a steep drop in each direction except that of the city. It’s a great park, but even in the middle of winter, but it would be challenging to find a place to operate that wouldn’t either get in peoples’ way or attract too much attention.
The next evening, after the conference, I headed downtown for dinner, thinking about setting up the antenna on the hotel roof. I had checked earlier in the day, and the roof is indeed open until around 11 pm, and no one goes up to the swimming pool level because it is too cold. As I strolled down Avenue Jean Médecin, I looked at the festive lights strung across the street and started to read them. That’s it, I thought, I’ve finally snapped. Now I’m seeing morse code. But yes, those lights spell “bleu azur” over and over.
I had only a few contacts from the hotel roof. Five watt and an inability to really get the wire clear from the hotel roof meant that I only reached a handful of stations in neighboring states (Italy, Germany and France itself), but I was happy to work anyone. Most of Europe is shielded from Nice by high mountains; the success that I had was likely NVIS over the mountains.
When I mentioned to Phil, G3SWH, my QSL manager, that I was thinking about visiting Monaco with my QRP kit and flinging a wire into a tree in some park, he wisely suggested that I give Claude, 3A2LF a call. That night, I dropped Claude and note, and the next day, he went out of his way to help me by obtaining permission for me to operate. While Monaco is a signatory to CEPT, there’s an asterisk that requires visitors to obtain permission from the Direction des Communications Eléctroniques to operate. On Saturday, I hopped on the intercity train, which follows the coast, and was in Monaco about a half hour later.
Claude also suggested that throwing an antenna into a tree would not work well — first, because there isn’t a lot of space. Monaco is the most densely populated country in the world. Even where there are parks, there isn’t much place to put an antenna and it would raise eyebrows. Since the borders between Monaco and France are not marked, I’d also be running the risk that I might have some part of the antenna in the wrong country! Claude’s suggestion, for which I was infinitely grateful, particularly given drizzly weather, was that I work from the club station. That station is located in a multistory building, and the antenna is a mobile screwdriver mounted on a bracket, held about a half meter from the building, about halfway up. The radio is set up to run at 100W, which is the maximum allowable output power in the country.
I couldn’t stay too long, but I put in a solid hour, some of which was trying to remember how a Yaesu radio works (I think it was an FT450?). I kept the dial set to 40m and got a steady run of replies from stations in Europe. I usually try to stay out of pictures, but Claude took a photo so I could prove that I’d actually been there. I made a total of 56 contacts, so I felt the trip was absolutely worth it.
Now that I’m back in Madagascar, I’ve had a chance to upload the log to eQSL and LOTW. If anyone wants a QSL card, I’ll make one. Requests for direct QSLs should go through my US address on qrz.com and will probably take about two months to round trip.
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