Although band conditions on 20 meters were supposed to be “fair”, I made a lot of nice DX contacts from the club station PI4ZHE last night. I dug my way through some big pileups (with ease, see previous post) and made contacts with stations in Iraq, Namibia, Bahrain, Ceuta, Jordan, South Africa, Argentina, Algeria, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Puerto Rico, Suriname, England, Russia and the USA. At 20.00 UTC I joined my friends at the infamous 247 DX Net with lots of familiar voices like net leader Jose KP4BME from Puerto Rico, Jack W2AF from New Jersey and the ever present “big voice” Joe KB3NXT from Florida. Ramon PZ1EL was there too for a third week in a Row. 5/9 plusses from all over the place including my 13.000km maximum QRB of the day with Walter LU1XP from Buenos Aires. Just great fun!
Is that your beam, or are you just happy to hear me?
Time for a little update on my ham related acivities! I have not worked the ham bands from the home QTH lately. Work pressure and there’s also the club and the band needing my attention. Nevertheless, I am operating the club station PI4ZHE (almost) every Thursday evening and what a joy it has been lately! Conditions weren’t that great on most nights but I was still able to make lots of nice QSOs with many DXCCs behind Ye Olde Kenwood TS-870. We added a vintage Kenwood TL-922 amp to our shack (a story about that in a later post) feeding the 9 element Optibeam on top of the 100ft club tower. So, fantastic setup and 5/9s from just about everyone. I also enjoy the presence of my fellow club members, it’s a great electronics & ham radio club with lots of electronics projects and other activities going on. That said, I will try some CQDX behind the IC-7600 in the attic again soon to fill the void in my logbook, but on Thursdays look out for PI4ZHE on 20 and 15meters!
73s de PD2H
Finally, some new contacts in the log
Quite a busy year in every respect and little time to spend in my shack. I was the main operator at various several special events from the club station this year but not much to add to my own log. Conditions are down, nearing the bottom of the 11 year solar cycle but today I decided to run a CQ on 20m and made about a dozen nice contacts, PJ4/NT5V on Bonaire Island being the best DX for the day. Let’s see what tomorrow will bring.
Back on the Air!
My hexbeam suffered some serious damage from the storms early this year and had to take it down for a complete rebuild. Thanks to the service and fine materials of Ant MW0JZE the antenna is back on the tower as of today. I haven’t done any HF since the end of January besides operating the clubstation PI4ZHE so I’m glad to be back in business. The bands seem to be next to “closed” today but scored a 5/9 QSO with Special event station RM55GC and closed the log after a nice 5/9+10 chat with Scotsman Paul EA5IKJ operating from Spain.
Happy New Year & Best DX Wishes!
Happy New Year Everyone! Made quite a few nice contacts on this first day of the year. CQ on 14.240.5 was answered by various stations from Finland, Greece, Spain, Russia, Israel, Ukraine, Croatia, Poland, Romania & Hungary. Conditions were reasonable for short skip QSO’s.