Thursday, May 18, 2023

The Swing

It was not supposed to be an open band, the solar report was awful and the 20 meter band was really noisy.  But there was DX there, I could hear them on the Phone portion, so I switched to CW, tuned to 14,000 and starting rolling the VFO.. the way the Bard taught us.

And there it was.  at 14,0299 a faint signal, but building.  It wasn't that it was too faint, it was good copy except the swing was really odd.  The call wasn't making sense.  I hadn't heard swing like that before.  He was calling CQ, I think.  The swing was that off.  No, he was calling CQ but his call was..   9J  9J2 ? was that a 9J2B or 9J266 made no sense.  Had to be B, 9J2BO   Ok I had the call right and he had no takers.

Nothing spotted either.   I looked up at the map and didn't see it right away.   I'll work him first and worry later.  The prefix did not sound familiar.

I dropped my call.   And he came back to me right away.  We had to straighten out my call with his copy but after a couple tries he copied it.   I was only running 90 W on a loop.

But we had a nice short QSO.  He was Brian in Lusaka, Zambia.  He said he'd been to Seattle before and I think he was talking about his station, I believe.  It got difficult to copy the speed.    I replied politely and tried to keep the QSO going but figured that there were several stations waiting to work Brian, I should try to wind it down.

OK this was a new one.  All time new one for me.  And on CW.

I was so excited, I tried to hold the QSO and maintain semblance of understanding.  But I think he figured out soon that I was fumbling around trying to thank him at the same time I was giving him my information.  I just sent out that I should finish it here and gave him a VRY 73 and TU for the QSO.

A card will go in the mail tomorrow morning.

I fired off an email to my club reflector for the spot and then I started hearing a flurry of calls to him but nothing on VE7CC cluster yet.   As that little pile up started to groan a little, I moved up the band and heard another weak flutter signal and copied a M4O but the first letter was probably T.    I might have mistaken it for TN not TM but anyway, I answered their CQ too and it was a quick QSO, they were a DX'p and upon looking up the QRZ they activated IOTA EU-32 Oleron Island just off coast of France near La Rochelle.  Still counts as France, but an IOTA that I probably won't hear too often.

I put them in the log too and then went back to 14,000 and the band was not as easy to hear then.  

Checking my email I noticed my friend Rusty W6OAT give me note about Zambia and that put a smile on my face.  It was all this encouragement to do CW contests that is building my confidence and what a day -- a new DXCC entity in the log and tomorrow, Friday will be a SST contest to do.   

The latest QST magazine cover message: "Fun in the Field".   Fun is right.


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