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Ham Radio Web-Archeology

Stan (WA1LOU) had an article today about (CEØY) Easter Island - timed with the Easter holiday weekend. Stan’s Surfin’ articles on the ARRL website are almost always worth a look (if you’ve missed out on these, check out WA1LOU’s blog).

indianajones4.jpgAnyway, in today’s edition, he stumbled across a website that claims to be the “first Web site associated with an Amateur Radio expedition.â€?  I wondered how I could verify such a claim. So I threw on my fedora, strapped on my bull whip and began to do a little digging (ref. Indiana Jones).    

First, I checked out the Cordell Expeditions site making the claim. Interesting site. Sure enough, there’s the claim that it was the first web site to host dxpedition content. Ok. Time to check the WayBack machine.  For Cordell Expeditions that’s a call to: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cordell.org to see when the WayBack internet archive site had (if ever) stored copies of the site. 

The WayBack Machine held copies back to Jan 1998. OK, but can we see the actual data from that date? Unfortunately, no. The problem is that the link on the Cordell site refers to another site (http://ve7tcp.ampr.org/DX/easter which is now a dead link).  What now Indy? A dead end?

My next step was to check the WayBack for the ampr.org site for the page on the Cordell site: http://web.archive.org/web/*/ve7tcp.ampr.org/DX/easter/

That uncovered one archived page from 1998: http://web.archive.org/web/19980514184959/http://ve7tcp.ampr.org/DX/easter/

Ok, so I’ve now verified that the page did indeed exist on May 14, 1998. 

Next, I wondered if there was a way to search the WayBack for terms like “any pages on any site containing DXpedition prior to 1998″. Sadly, this functionality doesn’t exist yet although their FAQ hints that it might someday. I’m not sure if there’s much more that can be done at this point to verify the claim – so, I’ll be putting away my fedora and whip… for now…

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 3:59 pm and is filed under ham radio (general). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Ham Radio Web-Archeology”

  1. I don’t know if you are looking for website containing DXpedition prior to 1998 ONLY about Easter island. Anyway there was a page dedicated to the DXpedition in Koh Chang Island – Gulf of Thailand North East Group December 1996 published in the first days of 1997 (I was the webmaster). The link is :
    http://www.425dxn.org/dxped/hs50a/
    Best 73 de Maury
    i1-21171/IZ1CRR

  2. Maury

    The claim was that the Easter Island was the first DXpedition documented on the web and that it occurred in 1995. Hard to prove, but an interesting claim.

    Thanks for the link and congrats on having an antique dxpedition site of your own. Any ham radio websites older than 10 years (pre-1997) are “antique” in my opinion.

    73
    Pat NØHR

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