C6AQW Licensing/Publicity

Licensing for the Bahamas was relatively painless. The only concern I had was that the websites on licensing said it was a very slow process (up to 3 months). Since I made my decision to go there only about a month prior to my trip I was a bit concerned. I have always found that speaking to licensing officials in person is the best policy so I found the phone number and name of Chizelle Whyms, the person most knowledgeable about Amateur Licensing in the Bahamas Public Utilities Commission. A quick purchase of a phone card online made calling and faxing there pretty inexpensive. Ms.Whyms told me there were no formal licensing applications I would have to write a formal request for a license and fax or email it to her. There was, however, a form I could fill out and fax to her with my credit card number to expedite payment of the $25 licensing fee. I emailed and faxed her both of these along with a copy of my U.S. license and passport photo page. Since I was going to be participating in the contest I was eligible for a C6Axx callsign instead of the usual C6A/WQ5W reciprocal licensing. I sent her a list of preferred C6A callsigns, with C6AQW being the only one available. That was OK, C6AQW is pretty close to my U.S. callsign and it sounds good phonetically and on CW. Ms. Whymms was very friendly and easy to work with and she emailed me a .pdf copy of my C6AQW license Friday (10/19) so I’m ready to go. I plan to send this license shortly to the ARRL so I can obtain a LOTW certificate for this call so I can upload my logs during and immediately following the trip.

I prepared a press release announcing my expedition and emailed it to all of the major DX publications and contest websites. I then contacted the major QSL database managers with my QSL information and posted the call on both QRZ.com and Buckmaster. The expedition was announced in several of these publications last week. I have found that preparing a professional looking press release is very effective and necessary even with small expeditions such as these. It makes it easy for the DX editors to cut and paste into their publications. Publicity is a good thing! Hopefully many contesters will put me on their list of multipliers to look for during the contest as a result.