Some years have passed, but the memory of this beautiful holiday and my first experience of DXers is still vivid in my mind.                 All began like a joke. During my usual Saturday’s QSO with IK1MAP and IK1YEV I announced them our next vacations to Maldives Islands, so they advised me to take my Kenwood TS-50.
At the moment it didn’t seem a good idea, but every times I met them on air they insisted on this DX Spedition, so that I was persuaded to do this new experience.
On my side it was not so easy to convince of this fact my husband Fulvio, OM too-IZ2EXA, but with a lot of patience… at the end he made me a dipole for this adventure of mine!
My first call on 20 mt. was not much successful because of the time: 15,00 GMT; I had to wait for an hour before writing my first QSO as 8Q7LY on the Log.
I got immediately good reports from OM from India, who I consider very nice gentlemen and good friends for the pleasant QSO during the day, when propagation was not good enough.

Ada Garibaldi I1MQ Ricchetti, born in 1924, A.R.I. Honor Roll No. 36 and A.R.I. Top Honor Roll No. 1, second Italian YL since 1937, shortly after Lolly Balboani I1BL of Vicenza, where only thirteen made  CW QSOs as MQ / YL second operator, so as she appeared on the QSL of her dad. Ada is the daughter of art, because her father John Garibaldi I1GA/I1MQ was deputy Chef of the Royal Navyand and he tough her the Morse code during her childhood. When she was  seventeen, Ada attended the first course of telegraphy at the Technical Institute "G. Ruffini "of Imperia, and completed advanced training in the aviation area 1st Place - Team 1st Air Command-Directorate of Telecommunications and responsibility for flight in Milan, after which it was intended as a telegraph operator at the airport in Turin, where she remained until the armistice on September 8, 1943. Later in 1944 she took service took as auxiliary radio operator at the Italian Social Republic Inspectorate GNR Frontier, getting daily news in telegraphy of Agency ANSA in Rome, occupied by Allied troops. She held this task until  April 25, 1945. The end of World War II she was shaved to zero and moreover this bad experience she had served one   months  of prison. Despite this incident Ada still feels very lucky considering many of her comrades who paid with their lives instead.