A Big Dxpedition Win For African Teen

Members of the VU4 Andaman Island DXpedition are still awaiting news of their callsign from the Indian regulator, but the wait is at least over for their addition of a new team member. The next generation of DXpeditioner is from a country with very few hams at all!  A 17-year-old radio amateur from rural Malawi has joined the DXpedition team that is headed to Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal in October 2026. Although Malawi has callsigns designated by the IARU, the country does not have a formal amateur radio programme, so he first had to test and qualify for a foreign callsign (the US) before he could get his Malawi call. Urgent Jere (pron: Urgent Jerry), 7Q6UJ, is not just along for the ride on this trip. Barely a year after passing his US Technician exam, he has already confirmed 168 DXCC countries as a chaser. Soon, he will be on the other end of that envious pileup. He is studying to upgrade his license and sharpening his proficiency in CW.

Urgent was mentored by Don Jones, 7Q6M/K6ZO, as part of a project created by the HacDC Amateur Radio Club of Washington, D.C. and supported by the Jeffrey Dahn Memorial Foundation. Urgent hopes his efforts will inspire other young people in Africa to embrace amateur radio too. The goal of this programme is to increase the number of hams in Africa.

One of Urgent's next trips after India will not be to a DXpedition but to an even longer journey that will shape the rest of his life. He plans to go to the US, where he hopes to combine academic studies with radio science at Virginia Tech University.