For many years, the Foundation for Global Children (FGC) and SEISA have been supporting Bhutan educational activities, including sport activities and quality of life development for Bhutanese. Zorro Miyazawa, JH1AJT, is a chef director of FGC, and he is also a CEO of the SEISA group. The organization also supports Bhutan Olympic Committee (BOC) to send athletes who are going to participate in the competitions in TOKYO 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

JH1AJT Zorro (left) and E21EIC Champ (right) in A5A

Recently, we have set up an official club station for students at the Royal Thimphu College (RTC), with a special callsign A50RTC. I am one of the staff members of the team, and travel to Bhutan with Zorro, JH1AJT, for more than 10 times by now. We usually introduce ham radio to Bhutan students and hold some short workshops for the students. We also provide an opportunity for the RTC students and their educational staff members to take the FCC examination to get a ham license.

View of Mt. Everest

We used the IC-7300 to be on the air.

The purpose of my latest trip to Bhutan during 10th–12th September 2019 was to repair their antennas and built a new 50 MHz 8-ele Yagi, the CL6DXZ, manufactured by Creative Design. Also, I rearranged the station as we set up our own ham shack permanently at the Royal Thimphu College (RTC). Our next mission is to install a new permanent tower and one more set of antennas for the A50RTC station, including the low band antennas for the 3.5 MHz and 1.8 MHz bands. They should be effective for the “low band season,” this coming winter.

A5A antenna farm

Since our trip was only for 2 days, we operated only in the FT8 and FT4 modes. We just wanted checked the antenna system we built, but the result was great! We were able to make 2,850 QSOs in total. A5A QSL cards can be get via JH1AJT or LoTW is available.