DX contesting
Saturday night, my XYL was working, and I had nothing else to do, so I turned on the radio. I made a couple of CW contacts on 40m, then remembered there was a big DX phone contest going on.
I tuned around a bit and heard quite a bit of DX as the band was in pretty good shape. I didn’t want to really spend a lot of time doing this, but I did want to play around a little. What I decided to do was to make one pass through the band 7.200 MHz to 7.125 MHz.
This took me 40 minutes to complete, and in that time, I worked 12 stations: TI5N, IO5O, TA7KW, EI7M, HK1T, EA3BOX, TM6M, PJ2T, S51YI, YT8A, CO8CY, AND ZF2AH. It was amusing, and I think I did alright for just having 100W and dipole. Also, if you notice, I bagged another station whose callsign spells a word (EA3BOX).
Cayman Islands
I’ve worked several Cayman Islands stations in the past, but you don’t really hear all that many on the air. There are more PJ stations on the air than there are ZF stations, for example.
That’s why I was kind of surprised to work another ZF2—ZF2LC—this evening. The signals were quite strong on 30m tonight, though, and maybe this guy was winding down from the contest over the weekend.
Sable Island
There was a station on from Sable Island this evening, too. There was a huge pileup on 30m the other night when a Sable Island station came on the air. So big that I couldn’t break in.
Tonight, though, it was a different story. I worked him on my second call.
I don’t know what all the fuss is about, though. Sable Island is really not that far away, nor is it very hard to work.
DXCC
As I reported the other day, I now have 89 countries confirmed via Logbook of the World (LOTW). Tonight, I checked my paper cards against the LOTW confirmations.
I came up with 16 more, including Samoa, the Slovak Republic, and Bolivia. That brings me to 105 confirmed, enough for DXCC! I know that’s not a big deal to a lot of you, but it’s something. :)
Elwood Downey says
Sounds like a big deal to me Dan, way to go!
John KC8ZTJ says
Great going Dan, Congrats on getting all the contacts for DXCC