DX-pedition

Early DX-peditions were simply exploratory and geographical expeditions in the late 1920s and 1930s, in which one or more radio amateurs participated to provide long-distance communications.

While the ship's wealthy owners enjoyed the islands, an amateur radio operator kept contact with, and sent QSL cards to, experimenters in the United States.

[1] The most unusual expedition to place reliance on amateur radio for communications was that of Kon-Tiki organized by Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 and using call sign LI2B.

A small number of DX-peditions focus on activating specific, remote Maidenhead locator squares for the benefit of VHF and UHF operators.

Many DX-peditions take place from locations with adequate access to power and supplies, often where the country has a small resident amateur population or where licensing is not very difficult.

Many Caribbean and Pacific island nations, as well as European micro-states, have very small populations, but have hotels, reliable power, and supplies, and are easy to gain operating permission in.

In addition to licensing and survival issues, DX-pedition participants devote much attention to the radio equipment they use.

In an extremely rare location for a popular awards program like DXCC, hundreds of stations may be calling the DX-pedition at any one time (known as a 'pile-up').

Therefore, DX-peditioners will aim to use high power and gain antennas on as many bands as practical, to achieve a loud signal worldwide and keep control of the inevitable pileups that occur.

This can also help the operation to make a substantial number of contacts with parts of the planet that have unfavourable propagation from the area visited, lying perhaps in the region on the Earth's surface which is diametrically opposite to it—its antipodal point.