Yesterday, I headed down to WA2HOM, our club station at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum to meet a gentleman from Toledo, OH who’s thinking about approaching a museum down there. While I was waiting for him, I fired up the rig and made a few contacts in the ARRL DX Contest.
I first pointed the beam south and tuned to 10m. The band was open enough to work a bunch of stations in the Caribbean and the northern rim of South America. I then QSYed to 15m and pointed the beam at Europe. After working a couple of stations, my man showed up, and we had a nice conversation about the ins and outs of a museum station.
Later in the evening at home, not wanting to get into the fray, I tuned to 7.115 MHz, the slow-speed portion of the band. For whatever reason, contesters seem to leave the subband 7.100 MHz – 7.125 MHz open, which makes it a good spot to look for contacts if you don’t want to get into a contest.
Yesterday evening, I connected with Tom, WD0HBR. When I joked that he mustn’t be a contester, he replied, “No, I’m not. It’s too much like work.”
DXing Africa
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been fortunate enough to work the 7P8C and the 3XY1T DXpeditions, both on the 30m bands. The good news is that, for whatever reason, I seem to be able to put a decent signal into Africa. The bad news is that there aren’t that many hams in Africa!
I worked 7P8C on February 10, 2016. Fortunately, I caught them when the pileup wasn’t too big, and it only took me about ten minutes to work them.
Working 3XY1T on Friday night was another story. While not huge, the pileup for 3XY1T was considerably larger than the 7P8C pileup. I got down to the shack just after 9pm (0200Z), and when I heard 3XY1T, I jumped in.
Normally, I lose interest in working a pileup after about ten or fifteen minutes, but for some reason, I decided to stick with this one. I called for a little more than an hour with no success, when I decided to give up. I tuned up the band a bit and called CQ a few times, but when I got no replies to my CQ, I decided to give the pileup another try. I had much better success, working them on the fourth call!
When the 7P8C and 3XY1T logs get entered into Logbook of the World, I’ll have 149 total DXCC entities, 148 on CW, and 108 on 30m.
ICQPodcast
I’ve joined the roster of commentators on the ICQPodcast, becoming, I think, their first U.S. commentator. My first episode, #205, is now online for your listening enjoyment. The topics we discuss include:
- Google’s tests on the 71 – 76 GHZ and 81 – 86 GHz bands
- ARRL partnering with RFinder to provide more up-to-date repeater info
- U.K. version of the ICOM comic, Alex Discovers Amateur Radio