OnAllBands will be winding down 2025 with QSL card articles featuring a couple of DXCC entities we’ve never covered before: French Guiana and, later this month, Lakshadweep Islands.
If you’ve never reached French Guiana, an overseas department of France on the northern coast of South America bordering Suriname and Brazil, here’s an excellent opportunity. The holiday-style TO2FY HF DXpedition by F4GPK is scheduled to run from Dec. 22, 2025 to Jan. 15, 2026. You can try to contact F4GPK on SSB from this 32,000-square-mile entity—#197 on the DXCC Most Wanted List as of December 2025 per Clublog.
About the size of Maine, French Guiana is the largest overseas department of France based on area, approximately one-seventh the size of European France. French Guiana’s population of around 295,000, however, ranks it well below Suriname (640,000), the least populated of South America’s sovereign nations. This leads us to the OnAllBands Geography Question of the Day:
While French Guiana is the largest of France’s overseas departments based on size, it ranks as the fifth largest in terms of population. Can you name all the French overseas departments with greater populations than French Guiana? Bonus points if you can name them in order. Hint: They’re all islands—and there are four of them. Answer today’s question correctly and you win…well, nothing, except the admiration of all of us at OnAllBands.
Why so sparsely populated?
This disparity between French Guiana’s size and population ranks it as one of the least dense territories in the world, with only nine people living per square mile. By comparison, Maine (population 1.4 million) has around 44 people per square mile—one of them being Bangor resident and prolific novelist Stephen King. About 95% of French Guiana is covered in Amazon rainforest, and it has some of the world’s poorest soils, two factors that contribute to its low population.
More About French Guiana
- French Guiana is the largest outermost region within the European Union.
- Its official currency is the euro.
- Standard French is its official language, though you’ll find many variations spoken within the region’s ethnic communities.
- French Guiana has been fully integrated in the French Republic since 1946.
- Established by Emperor Napoleon III, penal colonies on French Guiana existed from 1852-1953. This included the notorious Devil’s Island, where many high-profile political prisoners were sent. Henri “Papillon” Charrière’s disputed 1969 memoir chronicled his imprisonment and escape from Devil’s Island, which inspired a 1973 movie starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, and a remake in 2017. (Editor’s Note: Watch the 1973 version!)
- The Guiana Space Center (GSC), also known as Europe’s Spaceport, is located near Kourou, French Guiana, about 310 miles north of the Equator. In operation since 1968, the GSC has been the site of many notable achievements such as the 2021 Ariane 5 rocket mission which launched NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope. Additionally, several amateur radio satellites have been payloads aboard rockets launched from the GSC, including Oscar 10 (PSB) in 1983 and Phase 3D (P3D) in 2000.
Incidentally, the Ariane 5’s final flight (July 2023) from Kourou launched the satellite known as “Heinrich Hertz,” or H2sat, Germany’s first communications satellite dedicated to testing new satellite communications technologies in space.
Watch the Ariane 5’s final launch in the video below:
Tom, KB8UUZ, DX Engineering technical writer, and Mark, W8BBQ, DX Engineering customer/technical support specialist, provided these QSL cards from Europe’s Spaceport Radio Club Station, FY5KE.
More QSL Cards
The active hams at DX Engineering have had great success contacting French Guiana over the years (a good reason to contact them for help with your gear if you’d like to do the same). Here are a few more of the QSL cards from their collections.
From Mark, W8BBQ:
From George, K3GP, DX Engineering customer service/technical support specialist:
From Scott, N3RA, DX Engineering sales manager:
I’ll take “French Overseas Departments” for $2,000, Ken
Back to our question of the day: French Guiana boasts the largest square mileage of all French overseas departments but ranks fifth in population. Can you name the four French overseas departments with higher populations? Here goes:
- Réunion (Indian Ocean, 885,700)
- Guadeloupe (Caribbean, 378,500)
- Martinique (Caribbean, 349,900)
- Mayotte (Indian Ocean, 320,900)
French overseas “collectives” include French Polynesia (South Pacific), St. Barthelemy (Caribbean), Saint Martin (Caribbean), Saint Pierre and Miquelon (off the coast of Canada), and Wallis and Futuna (South Pacific). Other French territories include uninhabited Clipperton Island, New Caledonia, and the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (Crozet Islands, et. al.).
Visit DXEngineering.com for everything you need to upgrade your station to make sure you’re ready when entities like French Guiana are on the air.
You’ll find transceivers, antennas, amplifiers, CW keys and paddles, headsets and speakers, reference books like “Ham Radio DX: A Complete Guide,” and much more.
Editor’s Note: Every month, DX Engineering features QSL cards from our team members’ personal collections. To highlight upcoming DXpeditions, we’ll be displaying a few of our favorite cards along with details about what it took to make these contacts. We’re excited to share some of the special cards pulled from the thousands we’ve received over the years. We look forward to seeing your cards as well!
