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!
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.
Yours truly and fellow clubmates will be participating in the upcoming ILLW on 15-16 august. We will activate Lightship “Noord Hinder” (ILLW entry NL0036) and since the ship is moored right across our club we will be using the club shack & antennas this year. Our callsign will be PI4ZHE/LS and you may find us on the various HF bands depending on time of day and propagation. Check the cluster! A special QSL card is available for those interested. So don’t forget to contact us!
Quite a lovely day yesterday with lots of sunshine. When I walked out of my home in the afternoon I was approached by 2 guys that were looking at my antenna tower. “Amateur radio, sir?”. He showed me the callsign badge on his shirt. I intruced myself and the French hams insisted to make a picture of us together with the hexbeam tower in the background. True ham spirit! Unfortunately I forgot to write down their callsigns. When I walked back they were already gone. Hopefully they will send me a copy of the picture. After midnight I made a some contacts on 20 meters. Propagation to the Carribean was excellent and my QSO with Edwin HI3K from the Dominican Republic added another worked country to my list!
