Summer 2020. DXpedition to Albania

This summer I had the vacations. As the year before. And before. Suddenly we realized that because of the coronavirus all countries were closed for Ukrainian citizens but Albania. This circumstance became crucial while looking for the country we'd like to rest in. And now I can say we are completely happy with our choice.

Because of CoViD-19, we were able to make the final decision only seven days before the flight. As far as I have a CEPT license I had no worries about the possibility to temporarily work from Albania without any additional license. And that was my huge mistake: in order to get explicit permission from the hotel management, I had to provide the Albanian license. That was the reason why I was not able to work from the hotel during the entire stay.

Well, let's make the short story long.

As mentioned above, the CEPT-compatible license allows his holder to temporarily work from the country accepting such kinds of licenses. Fortunately, Albania is on the list of these countries. But I had some doubts regarding this and started digging the Internet for the information about the past radio expeditions to Albania. It was June 28, just three days before the flight.

First of all, I referred to people I have already had in my log. They were Dimitri Ferrari (IW2JOP), Henning Andersen (OZ1BII), and Florian Gjonej (ZA5G). Henning had not so much information about the current situation in Albania, but he advised to refer to Edmond Budo (ZA1U) and Fatos Demeti (ZA1FD). I dropped mails to all these people and started my waiting.

Dimitri Ferrari lives in Saranda, Albania, and has a huge experience in working from Albania. This is why I had received a great explanation of what is AKEP, how to register there, and what to do in order to get the temporary license. I have successfully registered there and started waiting for an answer from AKEP. It was on June 29.

It was June 30, when I received a reply from Edmond Budo. He advised me to grab all my equipment and go to Albania. I still had some doubts and fears regarding future adventure, and almost abandoned the expedition. But the confident assurances of Edmond helped me to make a positive decision and by the end of the day, the small suitcase full of the radio equipment stood next to his bigger brothers.

I have never been on expeditions prepared by myself from scratch. And I even haven't dreamed about the abroad DXpedition. At least because I afraid to bring my equipment with me. This time I had decided to break the ice and created the list of everything I need. You can see this list below.

• transceiver (Icom IC-7000)
• antenna tuner (by N7DDC)
• VNA (AA-30 by RigExpert)
• CAT interface (+cables)
• power supply
• power cords
• RF cable and patches
• connectors
• tools (pliers, cutters, screwdrivers)
• antenna (dipole for 20 meters)
• fishing rod (to support the antenna)
• ropes
• insulating tape
• CEPT license

The entire set seems huge, but in fact, it only took one small suitcase and weighted as few as 10 kgs (22 lbs). I have already had the most of equipment. The only thing I had to find was an antenna tuner. I have successfully found and bought it a few days before the flight. After getting everything together I tested the entire set, changed the bad USB cable, and put everything together.

July 1. The flight was easy and calm. No one asked me about the equipment in my suitcase. I even had not to declare it. We grabbed our baggage from the belt, followed to the exit, and one hour later we were in our hotel. On the next morning, I visited the small electronics booth next to the hotel and bought the local SIM card with plenty of minutes and 20 GB of the Internet.

July 2. I received an e-mail from Edmond. He told me that Fatos lives quite close to me, just 2 kilometers away, so that we will meet very soon. While waiting, we were enjoying the sea, delicious food, and a lot of sun and rest.

July 3. Fatos Demeti (ZA1FD) visited me. He brought all the required documents and we started the process of requesting the Albanian license. In order to get a temporary license, you have to provide a copy of your passport and national license. Also, Fatos attached a copy of his passport and license to the application. Although the process of registration was hard and misleading, the form has been successfully submitted after one hour of retries. Fatos said we have to wait until the request is processed. It was only 8 days left for the IARU Championship.

July 4. AKEP informed about the error in the application - the date of the issued license must be AFTER the date of the application submission. I have corrected everything and re-submitted the application back to AKEP. Keep waiting.

July 5. We are on an excursion to the northern part of Albania - the Lake Koman. In fact, this is a huge water storage reservoir built back in 1982. The lake looks like a Norwegian fjord.

July 7. Fatos wrote a mail to someone in AKEP to speed-up the entire process.

July 8. The application is accepted and moved to the "To be signed" folder. And it is in Tirana, 100 km away from my location! And I still have no ability to test the Albanian air.

July 9. We rented a car and headed south to Berat.

July 10. We are heading to Vlora, the place of the junction of the Adriatic and Ionic seas.

July 11. Fatos informed me that the application is still waiting to be signed so that I won't be able to get the explicit permission of my hotel administration. But there always should be Plan B. We headed to the Fatos' friend owning the small hotel not so far from me (about 1.5 km). The hotel named Malvina stood next to the sea. Fatos introduced me to all the people taking care of everything in the hotel and we went back then.

July 12. It's the IARU Championship day! I arrived at the Malvina hotel and started connecting equipment to each other. Fortunately, I had everything from the list. To be honest, the one thing I missed is the RF cable - the only piece I had was about 10 meters long. But Fatos helped me with this and borrowed me a 7 meters long pigtail. The antenna supposed to be a GP with one counterpoise. The 5 meters long fishing rod supported the vertical part of the antenna whereas the horizontal part was attached to something sticking out of the roof. The antenna analyzer (AA-30) showed very good resonance on 20 meters, the SWR was about 1.2 at 14.050. I tuned to 20 meters and was oddly surprised with a quite high level of noise (up to S9). This prevented me from hearing almost everything on 20 meters and above. Fortunately, the 10 meters band was open so that I conducted about 30 of FT8 QSO. Near the sunshine, I went to 40 meters. The noise floor was quite lower there so I was able to conduct about 40 CW QSO. But the presence of noise made my participation quite uncomfortable so that I decided to abandon my efforts and went back to my family.

July 14. Edmond Budo informed me that my license is finally signed so that I can grab it. Although this is quite late, I feel the inspiration to have a hard copy of the license. At least this is very helpful in future actions, like submission to LoTW.

July 15. Edmond was very kind to bring the license to me in the airport. To be honest, I have never met people like Edmond and Fatos, who made so much just for fun. In general, all the Albanians we met were very calm and kind people, which made our vacations very comfortable and pleasant.

To sum up. We completely enjoyed our vacation. Everything was just perfect: people, kitchen, history, sea, and air. Even almost failed expedition didn't make me upset. If someone asked me whether I'd like to visit this country one more time, I definitely give only a positive answer.