Wow
I'm glad I have P5 'in the log'
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From: Bob W5UQ <mailto:[email protected]>
Sent: 4/27/2016 8:34 AM
To: [email protected]; BRAZOS VALLEY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
<mailto:[email protected]>; [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: [tdxs-list] Fwd: P5DX What could have been
Very interesting... sent to me by a friend.
Bob W5UQ
P5DX what could have been…
Posted about 19 hours ago | 1 comment
<http://www.dxcoffee.com/eng/2016/p5dx-what-could-have-been/#comments>
from N6PSE <https://n6pse.wordpress.com/>blog
P5DX-what could have been….
As a Blogger, my blog represents my thoughts and my views only.
The content of this Blog does not represent anyone else but me.
This morning, I had to cancel a DXpedition. It was one of the
hardest decisions of my life. It was not for lack of permission,
it was not for lack of a team and equipment willing to go.
The prospect of a P5 activation brings out the worst in this
hobby. The posers, the nuts, the ill-informed and the
opinionated. But in the end, it mostly came down to a surprising
lack of support and lack of funding from some of the world’s
paramount DX foundations when asked to fund grants to the world’s
#1 Most Wanted Entity.
This is the story of P5DX.
Throughout several years of ongoing negotiations, the North
Koreans have told us that they have never before given permission
for an amateur radio activity within the DPRK. Of course we
don’t know if this is true or not as others have gone before us
and have been approved for DXCC, but this is what we were told.
We had hoped to be the first large DXpedition with clear and
unambiguous proof that we were active within the country and with
real evidence of permission. After tireless efforts, we finally
had a letter of invitation in hand from DPRK authorities inviting
us into the country as the first-ever large scale amateur radio
event.
In April, 2013, we informed the world of our “P5 Project”. We
were making numerous visits to the DPRK and establishing real
contacts. We were spending thousands of dollars of our family’s
money shuttling back and forth from our homes to Pyongyang, and
we wanted to give hope to the DX Community that an operation
might actually take place.
All told, we made nine visits to the DPRK. Despite several false
leads, for the most part our efforts seemed pointless,
unproductive and futile.
Until recently, when we finally got our big break.
As part of our P5 Project, we retained an expert in all things
North Korea to work and lobby on our behalf. Our “Emissary” was
very interested in our project and asked for no money from us.
Our “Emissary” has strong relationships within the DPRK and
regularly travels there.
In February 2016, our Emissary contacted us while we were on the
VP8STI/VP8SGI DXpedition. Our Emissary had been communicating
with relevant DPRK officials and sensed a new willingness to
consider our proposal.
We renewed our proposal and the talks continued. When we
returned home, we learned that we were very close to having
complete permission. After a couple more months of back and forth
negotiations, the DPRK agreed to a ten day amateur radio activity
with three radios and up to 20 team members. A venue was
investigated and approved.
Like the 2012 7O6T Dxpedition, the DPRK officials wanted to
showcase a new resort and offered it as a DXpedition location.
Within a span of a few weeks our Emissary and one of our team
leaders made a visit to Pyongyang to have face to face meetings
with high level officials. These officials had been involved in
Dennis Rodman’s visit as well as the just-completed Pyongyang
marathon race. Now that the marathon was over, we had their full
attention and cooperation. Things were moving fast.
The DPRK officials stipulated that only three Americans could be
on the team and no Japanese, but beyond that we were given the
green light to begin assembling a team of varying nationalities
from Europe, South America, and Oceania.
The DPRK officials insisted on no publicity in advance of us
going on the air, so everyone joining our team was sworn to
secrecy. A website was developed but would not be launched until
we were live and on the air within the DPRK. It was agreed that
we would use the call sign P5DX.
Our last major hurdle was that the DPRK was asking for a very
large fee to be paid for the permissions at various government
levels and ministries to operate from within the DPRK. It is a
very common practice for various governments throughout the world
to request a fee to be paid for DXpedition permission and
licensing. These fees are typically several thousand dollars in
many Third World countries. As we would see, the DPRK fee would
be considerably more.
While still trying to keep everything a secret, the largeness of
this fee required that we approach several of the biggest amateur
radio foundations for financial grants to help us with our
tremendous up-front costs.
We also consulted with an international attorney who counseled us
how to avoid becoming entangled in violations of the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act. Essentially, it is a serious crime for
Americans to bribe foreign government officials. However, it is
not a crime for Americans to be charged extra fees to visit a
foreign country. All of our fees would be paid directly to a
China-based tour company and no direct exchange would take place
with the North Koreans.
Given the outpouring of support that these amateur radio
consortia had given to lesser-needed entities in the past, it
never occurred to us that they would resist supporting a trip to
P5. One organization actually said that we didn’t need their
funding because we could charge whatever we wanted for the QSLs!
It was a disheartening revelation that they seemed more
interested in our ability to raise funds by charging high fees
later for confirmation “because we can” rather than in assisting
a major DXpedition that was in dire need of immediate
pre-departure funding to pull it off. We later proposed that
they merely pledge an amount to be donated if we were successful
and our operation was accredited by the DXCC staff, thus giving
them an easy way out if they were not pleased with our
performance. This still did not sway them. Here we were, just a
couple of weeks away from the first authorized multinational
DXpedition from the world’s most needed country, and we were told
we were on our own. I never thought it would come to this.
I have tremendous respect for these organizations and I am deeply
disappointed that they could not find a way to support our plans.
This left my Co-Leader, David-K3LP and I no other recourse but to
drain our own personal retirement savings to provide the bulk of
our funding. In addition to our upfront license fees, we needed
to buy radios, power supplies, coax, antennas and many more
items. We purchased roughly $16,000 in equipment and we spent
almost $4000 to ship it FedEx to Beijing to our staging area,
where it still sits as I write this Blog.
We continued to discreetly build our team
[The entire original message is not included.]
