It seems that the DX-pedition to Mt. Athos, SV1GA/A was not all it was advertised to be. Apparently, as of this writing, the team was operating there without a valid license and was kicked out of Greece with their equipment confiscated. An inglorious end to what could have been a new country for so many of us. What happened?
In time, I am certain that the truth of what happened will come out. But so far, this is what it seems to be preliminarly: either the license was made up (the original holder of the SV1GA ticket has been a Silent Key for more than 5 years) and the expedition thought they could use it without anyone noticing. Or, maybe, some agency issued the license in good faith and did not go about the proper channels thus invalidating the license.
What puzzles me though is this: if the DXpedition was legit, why wouldn’t they advertise it and suddenly show up on the bands? No DXpedition I have every heard of in 50 years of operating has failed to advertise. Why depend on spots to advertise your presence? To me, it makes no sense. Again, we will have to wait for the dust to settle to figure it all out.
If it was illegitimate, we have another issue. We can forget about Mt. Athos ever getting on the air again. The priests on the mountain have been embarrased and they are not likely to give permission to another outside group. Perhaps, in the future another priest will be a ham and will have the ok to operate. But I am not holding my breath about that one.
And what about the donations to the expedition that were made? If this was a bogus effort is it possible that other DXpeditions will be viewed suspiciously? Perhaps. Already there is much complaint in the ham radio world about having to pay for a QSL card or even an LoTW confirmation. I have said that, for the majority of these DXpeditions, these are valid donations as they are expensive to pull off. For instance, the upcoming Bouvet Island event in 2025 is budgeted to cost an astonishing 1.65 million dollars (according their website https://3y0k.com). But, if the amateur community is already feeling burned, what is to say that we will see this only as a revenue-generating event? Fool me once, shame on you…Fool me twice, shame on me, as the saying goes.
If the Mt. Athos event turns out to be legal, all well and good and we can chalk it up to a misunderstanding. If it was intentional, the ramifications will be impossible to predict but they won’t be good. Some hams may be very wary of ever donating again while others may always have in the back of their minds the question as whether the contact will even count!
One day after this news broke, people were already expressing their initial suspicions and making fun of the DXpedition. Take a look at this picture:
Obviously AI generated but it reflects something I have never seen: not just bitter disappointment but glee that these operators were arrested and expelled. And, yes, this was created without all the facts.
We saw the same thing surrounding Bouvet. With only 10K QSOs people were asking if they were even on the island and who managed what ultimately was a disastrous event, relatively speaking. Why should we ridicule? If an honest effort was made, what is the point of laughing about it? The same is true vis-a-vis Mt. Athos: if this was illegal, then we have a right, maybe even an obligation, to ostracize and criticize. But what if it was legal? What if this was a big misunderstanding? If it was just a big misunderstanding, there will be a lot of red faces. But, either way, the ham radio community has to come to terms with either its own behaviour or the behaviour of others who sometimes give us a bad reputation.