Shaun Favell, a medical doctor (consultant in emergency medicine) is planning an expedition starting next year hopefully travelling to Europe, Africa and possibly Outback Australia, delivering medical assistance and medical education. He’s currently converting a DAF T244 4×4 7.5 ton truck for the journey. Titled  “Follow Me Overland” a huge part of the expedition is generating a following to bring awareness of social and medical issues in deprived areas.

A big part of this following is radio. Shaun is an advanced radio operator, and amateur radio operators from around the world will be trying to keep in radio contact with us as we travel off grid. Expeditions involving radio are often referred to as DXpeditions (DX is radio lingo for long distance radio communication).

In addition to owning an ex RAF 4×4 lorry, he’s affiliated with RAF Waddington ARC (amateur radio club) – most of the members are ex forces, and many of them are communication engineers. The club has been awarded a club callsign by Ofcom of G0RAF.

Club members are owners of modern radio gear, but also old military radio gear such as the Clansman.

The club is very keen to promote and showcase radio equipment, particularly with a military theme as we are an RAF club. We have done SES (special event stations) for other events.

Our intention is to arrive with an ex RAF DAF T244 (mine) still in military colours, with a tent. The DAF will have a large pneumatic mast that extends into the air with a large beam antenna on top (previous photos) – this can be rotated on a motor. We will demonstrate long distance communication abroad to places like the USA and maybe Australia using modern and ex military equipment.

This SES has been awarded a licence (it’s actually a variation on Shaun’s advanced licence) which allows  unlicenced users to pass messages on the equipment under supervision. This is done by voice and morse. We have a morse station where we let kids send their name to another station over the air. We can give out certificates for this. We have been awarded an event callsign of GB0RAF.

 

 

In addition we monitor on frequency for local communications with other amateur radio operators who call for directions, to find out where we are in the event, or to say hello.

As a SES other operators also like to contact the station from around the world to log our callsign GB0RAF.

In addition to the military radios, Shaun will showcase his aerials and radio that will be used to communicate home as he wanders the world.