A Trip to Vietnam

Robert Voss, N4CD

It's fun to have DX chase you. How about a Ham vacation to an exotic location  Vietnam?

Some might ask why Vietnam? Since 1990, Vietnam has turned to a stableeconomic growth-oriented society, once again allowing Amateur Radio. Thereare only a dozen licensed Hams in the entire country.

Many of you who read Worldradio know that I am a County Hunter, who zips around the country giving out counties on SSB and CW.  Every now and then, the travel bug bites. As a county hunter, counties count no matter where you are operating, even as DX!

If you check the web and ads in the radio magazines you will find a dozen 'rent-a-shacks' around the world. Hiroo, JA2EZD, set up the station in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Preparations for the trip began back in May, as the necessary procedures take months. Hau, 3W6LI, who maintains the station walked me through the necessary steps to get my 3W license.

First you must get a visa from the Vietnamese consulate - a 30 day process and $65. Of course, you need a valid passport ($80), and plane tickets ($$$). Hau arranged the licensing in Vietnam ($80). Visitors are usually only licensed for 10-, 15-, and 20-meter operation in HCM city. At other locations, 40M operation is allowed (7000-7100). I wish I could have had official license to operate WARC bands, but as far as I can tell, they do not currently issue licenses for those bands. The locals said the government really doesn't care where you operate, but rather than jeopardize future chances to officially get permission, I just listened occasionally on the WARC bands.

At the end of September, it was off to the airport and over 9,000 miles of flying from Dallas, Texas to arrive in Ho Chi Minh City. With the rental places, all you need to bring is yourself, and your logging material/computer. There are no hassles with radio equipment' through customs as it is all there. Some countries are easy to bring in equipment while others are near impossible, and equipment is sometimes impounded or confiscated.

Hau met me at the airport. He held up a sign with my U.S. call and my Vietnam Call, 3W2DC. We were then off to the Hotel Kimdo.  There, you get a regular hotel room, plus full 24 hour a day use of the Amateur Radio station located upstairs' in a separate room on the top floor. The station antenna is a tri-bander up 150 feet and the rig is a Yaesu FT900 with an available SB200 amplifier.  Within minutes of arriving, 3W2DC made the first contact with BI5Q on 15M SSB.

Never having operated from the "other side of the world," which is 12 time zones different from Texas time, I expected things to be different, and they were! Lots of exotic calls came through - JT, DU, VR, YC, all calling me! Everything but Ws, Ks, and N  calls.  After a few contacts, it was time to sleep and recover from 36 hours of non-stop travel, only a few hours of sleep, and the big jet lag! Tomorrow would be the start of 10 days of intensive radio operations and some sightseeing.

One quickly discovers how different the bands sound. People call CQ on 14.020 § on SSB. On 40M, it's hard to find CW signals most of the time, and harder to find an English language QSO. The 10M band is full of extremely loud birdies and other garbage much of the day, making QSOs very difficult. The splatter you sometimes hear in the U.S. on 10M is 20 over S9 and all over.

During the day, when the band is open out a few thousand miles, you discover there aren't too many stations in Mongolia, Siberia, Indonesia, and those other exotic countries to work, especially on weekdays. All the real action comes when the band opens 5,000-10,000 miles in the evenings, and on the weekends. At 9 p.m. local time, the band opened to Europe for three hours. In the background, U.S. stations occasionally made it through. Special attention and calling "CQ USA" resulted in stronger U.S. stations making it through.

I was determined to give out Vietnam for those in the U.S. who needed it. That turned out to be a very tough assignment. The QTH is located right in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. Lots of local QRN made digging signals out challenging, but 200 U.S. stations went in the log over the 10-day period during the few daily hours of openings back to the states. Over 5,000 contacts were logged, mostly on CW due to the high noise. On CW, the S meter never dropped below S4, and on SSB, never below S7-8.  And that was in the good' directions. Noise seems to be a big problem in third world countries!

While there, I did a few days of sightseeing around the city and nearby. Motorbikes by the millions, everywhere! Pedicabs are used for local nearby destinations. While not known as a tourist destination' for many U.S. folks, a fair number of Japanese and Europeans come and enjoy the year-round tropical weather.

In October, it rained every afternoon or evening for a while, making it necessary at times to QRT due to lightning. Saigon is a hustling, bustling port city with many factories to churn out textiles, electronics, and other products for the west. All sorts of good food, just about any variety you want, is readily available and inexpensive.

There are many "starter" Ham radio clubs in Vietnam. For most locals, equipment is very expensive based upon an office worker's typical $100/month salary. The 2-meter band is assigned to taxi cabs, end to end (not Hams). (Don't bring your HT - there wonÌt be anyone to talk to, and you obviously won't get a license to use it!)

The pileups never ended, but my two weeks were soon up, and I headed back home to start answering the piles of QSL cards headed my way! Yes, it was definitely different and exotic. One quickly learns to appreciate the difficult job of working DX (the USA) from far away locations. Maybe the secret is to not go so far away, but still to 'rare' locations. That should make it a lot easier to work the U.S. stations!

(Ed. Robert earned a two-year subscription to Worldradio for submitting his story. You could, too! Just send us your story - and a couple of photographs, too! If we use it, you get the same valuable reward or your choice of being paid for your story. Who knows, you could even win a Putlizer Prize!)