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 9J26.  6 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.