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- Location actually?

Bangkok, Thailand - Yangon, Myanmar

- Ocuppation?

Trader

- How and when did you start on radio?

 I started in 1992 on CB (city band) and switched to DX in early 1993 thanks to Antonio ex 1AT1205 who passed me the passion for 11 m.

- What´s your equipment in 153?

Equipment, as always, is an Icom 706 MKII, original microphone, 25 A power supply and 1 el. cubical quad homemade by 1AT046.

- You have been a well known expeditioneer for years and you have made trips all around the Globe. This would have give you much fun, nice experiences and off course hard days. Do you have any special moment on your expeditions that will be remembered for life???...any secret to share with us?

I firstly smiled when i read this question because i thought of the very hard moments I had while on Dx-pedition and I'm happy that they only belong to the past.
To be mentioned the Corsica islands tour in 2001 when a storm destroyed the tent where Paolo 1AT960 and I were supposed to sleep. It was about 01.00 am when we got back to the tent to find it laying down on the ground, covered by water, and it was still raining hard. The only thing we could do was trying to set it up again (without success) and using it as an umbrella to protect ourselves from the heavy rain until the next morning.
The 2002 Chesterfield islands Dx-pedition was another unhappy adventure. After being sick for 4 days on the boat, with restless sleep, we finally got to the "promised land" and started DXing right away. At sunset we found out the island was inhabited by millions of rats who ate our food and tried to get into our tents, keeping us awake all night, for 5 nights in a row.

- What´s the average time you spend on prepare an expedition?

That may vary from one to another. For the challenging ones such as 339AT0, 135AT0, 342AT0, it took more than 6 months to get ready. A relatively easy one may be arranged in 1 or 2 months.

- Under your point of view...what would have been the best expedition made by you?

It's hard to say because most of the times we were successful and we had a good time, but 339AT0 was probably one of the best since we really loved the place, we met nice and unforgottable people and the propagation was gorgeous. My Icom 706'meter got a S 9+60 db for the first time in its life, and it came from a french station!!! 

 - An american DXers said on a magazine that under his opinion undisciplined pile-ups were caused by wrong practice on radio operation among expeditioneers on majority part of cases (60%)..Do you agree with this sentence?

I rarely encountered that kind of problem during my dxpeditions. The only case I can remember is  238AT-DX in 2001 when the conditions were so poor and probably my location (in the jungle) made it difficult for me to be heard in Europe, so everybody was calling and calling, having no idea whether I was RXing or TXing.

- Living now in South East Asia have to give you a great chance to listen to countries hardly heard on Europe. Have you had any surprise during those months on radio in Thailand or Myanmar? 

This year the propagation is very low so it's difficult to hear even European countries. The only nice surprise I had from Myanmar was a call from 241OD-0.

- Do you have any plans for the future??...Somewhere to go or where you´d like to go??

My passion for Dx-peditions is still alive, so don't be surprised if you hear me from a remote island of the pacific in the next 3-4 years ;-)

- Luca, you have been on radio when there wasn´t clusters or email available. Do you think that Internet has been an advance for the radio?

Sure, internet has changed our way to do DX.  Now it's easy to know when a DXpedition starts or what frequency it is using, and from my point of view it results in less people on the radio at a time. A few years ago, when internet was not widely spread, people spent much time on the radio, hunting rare DXCC and interesting islands. Now I think they prefer to surf the net and only turn on the radio when they know there is an interesting station and they know where to find it.

- Acording to number of QSOs in your logs..Do you think that radio is on crisis? 

I don't think radio is on crisis but 11 meters may be. I've seen many operators leaving 11 m. for Ham bands and we are going to see more and more in the next years because of the easier license system recently adopted by many countries.