The Ham Community gets and seems to accept the blame, but North Korea dictated
unwarranted rules and the team accepted them. Someone on the team or at least
trusted by the team spilled the beans. I probably would have missed the
expedition due to local rain and broken antenna, but that is not the fault of
the team or DPRK. What is not to be is not to be, but I would not have
breathed easy if I worked a station with such rules until the ARRL had accepted
the confirmation. I probably would have worked them on the off chance that
they were legit, but I would not have contributed to a expedition with such
rules. If you put up significant cash with no result, bummer, if not then you
are with me and are wise. If you did, sorry about that, but you may not have
been prudent. If you are the one who spilled the beans, then congratulate
yourself, vote for Hillary and join the jammers and kc police in the place that
you deserve. To the team, you are either heros or chumps and we will never
know which. Willis 'Cookie' Cooke,
From: Bob W5UQ <[email protected]>
To: ed <[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]>; BRAZOS
VALLEY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB <[email protected]>; [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 9:29 AM
Subject: Re: [tdxs-list] Fwd: P5DX What could have been
I don't... bummer...
Bob W5UQ
On 4/27/2016 9:17 AM, ed wrote:
Wow
I'm glad I have P5 'in the log'
From: Bob W5UQ
Sent: 4/27/2016 8:34 AM
To: [email protected]; BRAZOS VALLEY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB; [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 from N6PSE 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.]
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