In the colourful saga of Freeband ops across remote Kiritimati, one dxstination has always held the spotlight in OC-024 activities—Christmas Island—the atoll’s main and only inhabited landmass.
During the 266DA0 activity, undertaken by members of the Dx Adventure Radio Club (DA-RC) in September 2025, however, a brand new chapter in the 11m DX history books was written…
After weeks of negotiations with the Kiritimati Environmental Commission—navigating nesting season restrictions and brushing up on local conservation rules—a permit was finally secured for a one-day visit to diminutive Wood Islet…
Cook Island, a bustling bird aviary, remained strictly off-limits, but Wood (aka Parish, Woody or Picnic Island) was “game on, baby!”
Please step into the log with 43DA001 Darren as he recounts the highs, lows, and pileups of his amazing one-day dx adventure to this never before activated entity of the Line Islands…
Darkness, Diesel, and Determination
The alarm screams at 4:00 AM, like a sooty tern’s tonsils powered by a 5kw amp…
2 coffees later, a truck hired through JMB Enterprises in Banana Village rumbles into the courtyard of Christmas Island Lodge (CIL) and settles at my door.
Guided only by starlight from Pacifica constellations, I load the tray—folding table and chairs, radio kit wedged tighter than a sardine tin, an esky stuffed with sandwiches, beer, and water—and enough buzz in my veins to power a small village.
At Tabwakea Village, the largest settlement on the atoll, I pick up 266DA101 Sam, a Yamaha ET650 generator, petrol and 15m extension cord, along with an old Wi-Fi mast resurrected from a tech graveyard to become our antenna tower…
“Mauri ni bonbo!” (Good morning!)
Next stop is London Village—crawling at 30 km/h through pitch-black nothingness—a slow-motion pilgrimage across “te mwainga ni atae (the land of the atoll).
Fifty minutes of pothole-filled darkness later, we arrive at the Port of London (Officially Navy Harbour) where the ocean mirrors the dawn sky and its spectacular kaleidoscope of pink, red, orange and purple…
Tuna blitz baitfish just offshore, families share breaky on woven pandanus leave mats known locally as “te kabubu”, and our boat, also hired through JMB, bobs in the shallows, ready for launch.
Feathers, Foam, and First Sight of Wood
After 20 minutes, Captain James Cook’s namesake looms, a living cyclone of black sooty terns wheeling overhead, suspicious of our rare intrusion…
Soon it disappears behind us, though, and there—gleaming on the horizon—Wood Islet appears—a pristine sliver of white sand, thick with coconut palms, barely touched by modern life, except by picnic goers.
Listed in the Islands Base Online (IBO) database in the OC-024 section, diminutive Wood Islet lies just 400 m off Benson Point, roughly 4 km west of Cook in the South Passage…
As our craft pulls up onto the shore, we spy sand flats teeming with ghost crabs, while nesting seabirds—petrels, warblers, Red-Footed Boobies, Noddys, and terns—fill the air with chatter and wingbeats.
266DA101 Sam, ever the local guide, points out a picnic shelter—dusty solar panels, perfect shade—which becomes our QTH.
It’s a shack made in heaven!
Setbacks, Smoke, and Solder by Flame
Out comes the Icom IC-7300 transceiver, 40 A PowerTech power supply, 25 m of Paoli and Messi Hyperflex 5 cable, and the Skypper antenna…
The 18.9 kg generator and 2-stroke fuel can are placed a short distance away, and with eight arms at work, we hoist the mast. The antenna stretches its arms to the horizon, thirsty for signals.
Solid. Secure. Steady.
Then… disaster.
The genny growls into life. The rig powers up. But the meter shows just 10 watts output and an SWR of 7.
You’ve got to be kidding me!
A frantic trace through the feedline reveals the culprit: a fractured solder joint on a dodgy PL-259 EVO plug, connecting into the rear of the transceiver…
No backup cable. No soldering iron. No crimp tool.
Just… a cigarette lighter.
No worries!
In a blaze of field ingenuity, I melt the solder with a cigarette lighter—sizzle, pop!—strip back the braid with a pocketknife, jam it back into the connector, and screw it tighter than a Nun’s legs.
Click! Power alive.
“Mauri!” to the DX world—we’re finally on air!
CQ from the Edge of the World
VOACAP and Proppy predict excellent early morning prop to Europe, and indeed, on 27.630 MHz USB, a pile-up explodes with all the vigor of a blind caller on methamphetamine…
A mishmash of phonetics and digits storm in like a DX tsunami, filling the paper as 266DA/OC-024 is on the air.
“Mauri ni mwainga!” from our speck of sand in the Central Pacific, to OM’s who pounce like Pelagics on a soft plastic to create an incredible pileup.
The log ignites within seconds as some of the world’s premier 11m Island Hunters race to connect…
Leading the pack, 2SD178 Larry in the USA nails the coveted top spot, but the French DA titans quickly assert their dominance.
14DA049 Fred, 14DA001 Stef, 14DA011 Cedric, 14DA181 Marc, 14DA021 Phil, 14DA496 Rino, and more are inescapable, nailing the OC-024 ‘New One’ with surgical precision.
The IC-7300’s spectrum scope is dancing like a Kiribati kid at church as Scandinavia brings its own fierce contenders to the pile-up…
47DX101 John, 47DX011 Finn, and 47PL122 Arne in Denmark navigate the crowded QRG, while across the North Sea, the United Kingdom’s elite are in relentless pursuit.
26DX047 Darran from England, 68AT121 Robert in Northern Ireland, and 108LA019 Leanne in ‘The Land of the Brave’ all join the fray—each contact a prized addition to the dxpedition log.
Signals crackle, pile-ups swirl, and the airwaves shimmer with energy as DX Hunters from every corner of the globe battle for a fleeting on-air handshake…
Split mode is essential as we pin station after station, from multiple continents—EU, AF, AS, NA, SA, OC—Sennheiser HD-400S headphones practically smoking under the volcanic eruption of 59+ signals.
From the shore, our lightweight fiberglass and wire antenna enjoys clear takeoff paths northwest over open sea toward AS and EU, and east across St Stanislas Bay toward the Americas…
Signals roll in thicker than mosquitos at sunset—crystal clear, thunderous—not the fluttery, sea-scattered ghosts of past Pacific adventures, and the log swells like the guts of a Trevally gorged on pilchards.
Island Life Between QSOs
By the end of the opening session, the log reads like a who’s-who of Island Hunting, a global snapshot of pure dedication, passion, and the thrill of chasing rare and coveted DX…
Special mention of notorious island chasers who arrive with thundering signals: 35DA035 Frank in Austria, 19DA104 Gene in the Netherlands and 10MEX001 Ricardo in Mexico.
The Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands (AF-004) is well represented also…
34DA010 Saul and 34DA183 Juan Carlos on Tenerife, and 34RC213 Paco on Fuerteventura Island all solid 5/9 signals.
Several rare ones also appear. In Iceland 27/13IR105 Thommy, 58CB172 Meapi in Eastern Malaysia and 132DA012 Thomas in the Ratak Chain of islands (OC-029).
Around mid-morning, the European pile-up softens, so we crack open the first cold beers — te mwakuri ni bon bo — celebrating early success and the salty sea breeze that sways the palms…
With the Americas rolling in, I pass the HM-219 mic to my Kiribati buddy, Sam, and wander off to soak up our little slice of DX paradise.
To one side, the ghostly shores of Benson Point and the abandoned Paris Village. To the other, Cook Island, a kingdom of feathers and shrieking birds—Noddys, Terns, Red-Footed Boobies—living in joyful chaos.
I collect shells for the YL, take photos and watch seabirds dive-bomb into waves. Pure serenity!
Beyond the palms, Kuwaata Lagoon shimmers like molten glass beneath the mid-morning sun, its surface broken only by darting terns and the lazy swirl of bonefish in the shallows.
Back at the station, the Yamaha ET650 continues to purr like a well-fed reef shark…
266DA101 Sam is deep in QSO with 224AT104 Ienimoa from Tarawa Atoll (OC-017)—a beautiful Kiribati-to-Kiribati connection in native tongue. Two bros from East and West unite over the airwaves.
Meanwhile, our boat crew has fired up a beachside BBQ—marinated chicken wings and fresh reef fish. The delicious aroma blends with the salty air, the smell alone worth the boat ride. Paired with our sangas and cold Heinekens, it becomes a feast fit for the DX gods!
The Final Push and Farewell to Paradise
As afternoon creeps in, the band grows sluggish, as it had on the main island the past week…
A few more QSOs trickle in, but the stunning backdrop of sea, sand, and sky, along with the gentle te tati ni moa (cool island breeze), keeps spirits high.
Local Pacific stations are prevalent with 172AT101 Philippe on Grande Terre (OC-032), 17HI550 in Hawaii and 201DA088 Anae in the Leeward Islands (OC-067) exciting log additions.
Towards the NW, 153AT777 Jan in the Kingdom of Thailand, 113AT106 Edgar in Western Malaysia, 155DA441 Gary on the island of Taiwan (AS-020) and other signals from the Orient hit harder than a tropical WX downpour.
By 4 pm, I’m sunburnt, half-deaf, and buzzing like a rotor locked on a summit of rare signals…
With our notepad bursting with over 300 contacts, we begin packing up. The mast is lowered, gear is boxed, and petrol drained from the genset, then carried to the boat.
We clamber aboard with sandy feet, lobster faces and beer-induced-smiles.
As the fiberglass hull slices through the shimmering sea, Cook and then Christmas islands come into view once more…
The effort, the cost, the troubleshooting, the sweat and scorched skin—all of it is worth it.
Wood Islet has been carved into the 11m DX annals of Islands Base Online (IOB), DX Proofs, and Cluster archives, plus the memories of island chasers around the world.
Lucky ops will soon receive a one-of-a-kind IOTA QSL card, a small slice of our 266 Division adventure, postmarked from paradise.
From the team who orchestrated this fantastic IOTA project, “Mauri naba” to the long list of incredibly generous sponsors who made the 266DA/OC-024 activity on Wood Islet possible…
And huge thanks too to the Kiribati Wildlife Conservation team for sanctioning our work, and to everyone from JMB Enterprises who made this island adventure possible.
📌 We adhered to Kiribati’s strict environmental conservation rules, following the ‘DA-RC IOTA Code’ and ‘Checklist’ to keep our footprint as light as a ghost crab’s track on the sand…
This meticulousness is what earned us the permit and will continue to gain us entry to protected areas in the years to come!
Until next time… from the deep blue Pacific.
73 de Daz, 43DA001
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