As a part of mother France, French
Guiana is part of the European Union and the Eurozone; its
currency is the euro. The country code top-level domain (ccTLD)
forFrench Guiana is .gf, but .fr is generally used instead.
So once again the astute French handling of
its heritage of overseas empire puts the Brits to shame, and
this time they have themselves the perfect location for a
spaceport on the equator, directly administered as a French
Department direct from Paris High Command.
It operated as a
penal
colony from 1852 until 1946 - somewhat longer than the UK
used Australia for similar purposes. Former inmates
included STeve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman in the memorable movie
of the book, Papillon.
The space community means that there is no shortage of technical
expertise, supporting the Radio Amateur Club
de Kourou – French Guiana - which operates FY5KE - which is
located on a 2500 sq. meters lot in the leisure zone of the CSG (European Spaceport) in Kourou. There are now
six towers 14m, 18m, 21m, 21m, 24m and 30m high.
The annual CQWW DX SSB contest seems to provide annual
impetus for this team to tweak this impressive station.
QSO recording...
Here's a bit of an experiment with this one to
illustrate to challenges of sorting a pileup out ...
...precision DXing...
....and this is a overlay of the local
conversation on the 7300 and the Twente Web SDR
Workable if not generous signal
The prop forecast for the time and frequency
was close
