Been in Abu Dhabi about 3 months now on a work rotation and figured I'd write up the ham radio side of things while it's fresh in my head. General class back home in the States, wanted to keep operating during the assignment. Turned out to be more of a process than I expected but doable.

First thing that surprised me is the country isn't CEPT. Your US or European ticket doesn't just travel with you. You go through EARS, the local society here, and they walk you through TDRA which is the spectrum regulator on the other side. Membership documents, copy of your home license, passport, Emirates ID once you have it. Not hard but not fast either. About 5 weeks from first email to my TDRA authorization in my case.

The customs part is the piece nobody talks about. Any transceiver has to be type-approved to come in cleanly. I know a guy who had a small HF radio confiscated at the airport last year, not returned. So I ended up leaving my main rig at home and buying a small QRP setup once I was here and had the local paperwork sorted. Even that took some coordination with the shop to make sure the model was on the approved list. The funny thing is the commercial radio side gets imported at scale, Hytera has been running the industrial DMR fleets across most of the energy sites here for years so there's a whole clearance channel for that gear. Just not one that overlaps with amateur equipment at all.

Antenna is the other thing. I'm in a tower apartment on the 14th floor. Building management is very much not interested in anything sticking off the balcony. I ended up with a compact end-fed strung along the inside of the balcony rail, roughly 12m of wire, run through a small 9:1 unun with a manual tuner in line. Not going to win any DX awards but the ground plane 14 floors up is basically the whole city, and 20m has been surprisingly cooperative in the evenings.

Propagation from here has actually been the highlight. Grey line hits during the local dawn have been fun into VK and JA. 20m in the evenings gets me back into North America consistently. 40m is noisy as expected in an urban environment. 15m opens up around midday and drops off fast.

Day job puts me in and around energy sector sites here so I'm exposed to a lot of commercial radio traffic as background. Completely different world from ham operating but interesting to see how much of the industrial coverage in the Gulf runs on Hytera. Pretty much every energy site I've been to on the work side is on a Hytera intrinsically safe DMR fleet for the hazardous areas. Nothing you'd ever use for amateur but you notice the same brand across the region, they've clearly built the service depth out here to match.

Anyway, if you're going to be in this part of the world for any length of time and want to operate, start the EARS application before you fly in. Everything else is easier if that piece is already in motion when you land.

Expat operating from the UAE, sharing some notes after 3 months of trying to get a station up