[Fourlanders] Jamaica Status

[Jim Worsham]

Everyone is here in Jamaica.  The Villa is wonderful.  It is night now but I will take a photo  and send it tomorrow.  Now for the bad news.  We ran into some Jamaican bureaucracy at the airport.  Apparently there was some paperwork with customs that was supposed to be done beyond just getting an amateur radio license.  Too make a long story short, they confiscated our radios.  We have the antennas but anything that was electronic and/or had a serial number was confiscated.  They even threatened to take our tablets and laptops but backed down when it was pointed out that hundreds of other people were coming through customs at that time with tablets and laptops.  We are going to go ahead and put the 6 meter yagi and HF dipoles up starting tomorrow under the assumption that we will be able to get something going on those bands eventually.  2M EME is in doubt.  We are attacking this on several fronts from here.  Today we called and emailed everyone starting with the US Embassy to the new ARRL CEO asking them to intercede with Jamaican customs on our behalf.  This was an honest mistake on our part, there is no commercial interest involved here and they just need to dial it down and give us our stuff.  The second front is we have two other operators flying in on Saturday and they are both bringing K3s with them.  They know what has happened and have both been told to not mention anything about amateur radio when going through customs.  That was our mistake.  It started when the customs inspector asked about the bags with the antennas in them.  We should have just said that it is aluminum tubing for an awning or something.  Instead we used the words amateur radio antennas and everything went south from there.  Lesson learned.  Third, we are trying to contact some well known active hams here in Jamaica to see if we can borrow something that will get us on HF and 6.  Keep your fingers crossed and I will keep you updated.  Feel free to pass this along to anyone who might be interested.

73
Jim, 6Y4KX

Sent from my iPad