Burkina Faso XT2MD DXpedition 2024

 When I tuned in to 24.897 MHz a few minutes back, I heard several stations mentioning their callsigns in CW, without giving a full call. Immediately I thought that a DXpedition must be around. Searched for any spots near that frequency on DXWATCH.COM, my favour DX Cluster site. I could easily find that XT2MD was around (24895 up 2). That is a DXPedition to Burkina Faso in West Africa, from 31st October to November 10th, 2024. Incidentally, yesterday I had noted that VU2CPL had worked this station on 10m, FT8.


Interesting part of the 12m WARC band here is that the noise level was below S1 and I could hear CW signals below that level! S meter needle was hardly moving when I was listening to the weak CW signals most of the time. There is no other band like that in my radio. I was using my End Fed Half Wave antenna with 10m of wire meant for 20m and above, mounted almost horizontally with 3m long PVC pipes on the parapet of my first floor terrace. The auto tuner on FT-710 was able to tune for an SWR of 1:1. I could only hear stations trying to work XT2MD, and not the DXpedition directly.

XT2MD DXPedition is planning to operate on all HF bands 160, 80, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10m. CW and FT8 operations are there on all these bands. SSB and RTTY modes are planned for all bands except 160m. Detailed frequency plan for each band and mode is available on their website. DL8JJ is planning Earth-Moon-Earth (EME or Moonbounce) contacts from XT2MD with a very long cross Yagi. According to his QRZ page, the new challenge for November 2024 is EME 2m activation from Burkina Faso, XT2MD. Anyone interested in a sked EME QSO is requested to email him directly. XT2MD DXpedition is a large 14 member team from different countries of Europe. Detailed QSL policy is available both on their QRZ page and their official website.

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