Ten members of the Northern Corridor Radio Group are planning an activation of Cocos Keeling Islands - VK9C between March 16th and 23rd 2021. The operation is vacation style although having said that, with 10 of us on the team, we expect to be quite active, but possibly not 24/7. We also hope to have involvement of the sole resident amateur on Cocos and we would like also to get him set up on HF while we are there. 

The callsign VK9CE has been issued for the Dxpedition.

Flights and Accomodation are now booked, flights paid for and equipment largely assembled. Providing we have no more COVID scares between now and March 16th, the trip is now set in stone.

We plan to be active on 80 through to 10m (possibly 6 as well), with two radios operating on FT8, CW and SSB. 

Antennas will be modest. We will have a Cushcraft vertical for 80-10m (including WARC bands), an Ultrabeam UB-V40 vertical for 40-10m and wire antennas for 40m and 80m. Radios will be a Flex 6700 and an Icom 7300; both with amplifiers up to 400W (the legal limit for VK). 

Participants will be Steve VK6SJ, Wayne VK6EH, Stu VK6SSB, Gerald VK6XI, Chris VK6LOL, Brian VK6BMA, Tim VK6EI, Alex VK6KCC, John VK6NU and Brian VK6MIT.

After some deliberation and a number of offers to manage our paper QSLs, we have decided to take up an offer from David EB7DX to manage Paper QSLs (direct and bureau). We will still be uploading to eQSL, ClubLog and QRZ.com in real time (pending good enough internet access) and at least daily to LoTW.  

Big shout out and thanks to Pedro EA5GL and Bob N2OO who also offered to do our Paper QSLs.