First I had a really nice chat with Angelo W8ERN from Michigan USA. Angelo is a real ragchewer with a deep voice, taking his time to get acquainted and very interested and courteous. Really the opposite of most ham operators I have met (no offense). Angelo is an outstanding operator, really, very nice to work with. We chatted for some time and after clearing the frequency I heard some distant voice calling something like “the Dutch station 5 up”, so I upped 5 where I heard another “5 up” and after that a “2 down”. Whats happening?
After landing on 28.428 I had an exceptionally nice chat with Stanley VA3AAA operating from HIS OWN ISLAND somewhere in Ontario Canada. He heard my QSO with Angelo and lured me to a free spot on 10m. The Island is dubbed “Stanley Island” (you can’t make up stuff like this really). Just. Wonderful. Stanley is retired for 25 years and lives on the Island with his family. They are completely self supporting. Power from solar cells and windmills, electricity stored in special batteries. Internet via satellite, used only in emergency situations. Just awesome. I’m really jealous of this guy. Living in a permanent DXpedition without the daily internet news media madness, can you imagine that? I’m floored.
My first year as a licensed ham went beyond expectations. I learned a lot and had tons of fun in the process. I met new friends, joined new clubs, chatted with random people in over 100 different countries. I gained experience as a contest operator for several special event stations like Windmills on the Air (PH14MILL) and the International Lighthouse and Lightships weekend (PA35WO), the monthly VHF locator contest (PI4ZHE) as well as a few contests I participated in with my own callsign. RFI hunting became a new challenge to keep my hobby going. Building antennas with the kind help of new ham radio friends was very rewarding. The fun thing about ham radio is that there are so many different ways to enjoy it. To me, DX’ing on HF SSB is the exciting thing to do. The bigger the pile-up, the better. Others are engaged in digital modes, or pursuing ever better audio on the lower bands or do things with satellites. Excitement for everyone!
Happy holidays, merry christmas and a happy, healthy 2015 to all of you out there!
Nice conditions on 20 meters today so I put out a CQ and worked quite a lot of stations. Had a very nice QSO with Predrag YU1FE from Belgrado and we had a talk about sound quality on HF. He recorded me while I switched my EQ on/of and fiddled with the bandwidth settings and has sent me the sound clip by email. You can listen to it here:
Although not quite zero beat, I think the audio of my old Kenwood is doing very well.
Did not have the opportunity to fully participate in the 10m ARRL contest due to other important obligations, but still got a couple of hours of single-op low-power contesting fun on the crowded 10 meter band. I recorded 100 QSO’s and just finished converting my paper scribblings to Cabrillo and ADIF formats so the various logs are all updated. I also added DXCC # 100 to my list by working TG9ANF from Guatemala, so my goal of 100 countries before year’s end has been reached just in time!
UPDATE 16 DEC 2014: QRZ lists this as country #101 because a QSO with Kosovo in my log claimed “Republic of Kosovo” as its DXCC while Kosovo is not recognized as a separate DXCC at this time.
