Hi Folks,
Although I can't comment on expeditions to the most wanted entity, I can say that ideas of expedition donations paying for a free vacation or making money for the operator are highly exagerated.
If things go well, donations included with qsl requests may pay for the qsls, but probably not. These donations are more than offset by bureau requests, USA stations sending bureau requests through the DX bureau to an operator in the US, stations who do not include an envelope with the qsl request, cards sent to the operator which the operator must then forward to the QSL manager, etc.
I can say for my FP operation this month, if every contact sent me $1 with the qsl request it would not pay for our plane tickets from Sydney, NS to St. Pierre. Then there is the expense of driving more than 2000 miles with motel stays, the motel cost in St. Pierre, meals, 50 trips to radio shack for some connector or adapter, a laptop to log on, a 32 foot extendable mast, qsl card printing, postage to send the growing stack of cards to the qsl manager from people who for some reason can't read as they are getting the address from QRZ.com, and it goes on and on. {don't forget gifts for the YLs since they couldn't go to St. Pierre with us!}
Unless an entity is at the very top of the wanted list any donations received are mearly a token of appreciation gratefully received, but thoughts of people getting free vacations or getting rich are out in fantasy land. For the most wanted expeditions, likely the costs are so astronomical that the operators would never expect to recover what they personally put into the expedition.
For smaller DXpeditions getting loans of equipment is more expensive than it is worth. Again, the largest DXpeditions may get donations of rigs which they then leave in country for the new hams in return for full page QST ads. But, for the normal places you must put the gear on your credit card, pay shipping both ways, and when the gear is returned they take the charge off the card. I don't know of any Dxpedition operator getting equipment donations and keeping it after the trip. If they did get any outright donation of gear they would sell it after the trip towards the expenses, maybe I'm wrong.
The motivation is not to make money. If so, it would be best to choose another business, because it won't happen. It is fun to go to different places, be the wanted station, and I personally get great satisfaction from the qsls indicating the person is very grateful for the contact or new country, especially qrp or whatever. Why else would I travel thousands of miles, climb giant boulders trying to put up an antenna, pay 37 Euros for a piece of codfish for supper, to sit in a motel room to pull out one more 229 OK1 station on CW during the crappiest band conditions ever encountered? I guess I need to go to the seminar to learn how to make money on DXpeditions because I'm definitly doing something wrong!
Just my 2 cents.
73,
Duane, WV2B
"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."-
Ralph Waldo Emerson
