Yesterday, after a contact with a station in Florida, I heard a very faint station calling me. On the first call, ll I got was “0AT,” but I guessed correctly that it was Steve, WG0AT. Steve, of course, is famous for his Summits on the Air (SOTA) activations and other portable ops with his goats, Boo and Peanut (right).
He was barely readable, and he was fading in and out with the QSB, so I gave him a 229 report. Even so, I really work at copying the QRP guys. I think that it builds up good karma so that when I’m on the low power end of the equation—as I was last weekend at the lighthouse—guys will try to pull my low-power signal out of the noise.
After the contact, I got a nice email from Steve. He wrote:
Hi Dan, Great to catch you on 30m! …just caught tail end of your QSO with other station WB9?? And at first you were 579 but QSB quickly took you down to 349 at end …tks for hearing my 3.5W from my little MTR2 with wire in the tree! I was testing it out on bench before running up the mountain tomorrow.
Cheer’s Steve/wGOAT
He also sent me a picture of his rig…
…and a recording of our QSO:
What I really like is the chuckle at the end of the recording. You can tell that Steve really has fun with ham radio.
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