Oregon station beams long path to Africa - gets Ireland instead!!

There was some interesting activity on 20 metres last night after the band had closed. It seemed to open again in places to the States. At around 7.45pm I could hear a weak Stateside station calling CQ. He was KI7M, based in Oregon on the Western side of the United States. He was calling for Africa, but the extraordinary thing was that he was beaming "Long Path" - ie, he had his beam pointing westward across the Pacific. And I still managed to hear him!!

So, hearing that he was calling CQ and looking for traffic, I spotted him on the DX Cluster. I thought that might help his cause!

Next thing I know, he's calling me! He obviously saw the spot on the cluster and said, "is there an Echo India 8 on the frequency?" and I grabbed the mic and hollered at him. I was quite weak back to him. I think he gave me 4 and 5 as my report and I had to call my name and spell it out several times before he picked it up. His name is Terry and he was working a 3-element Steppir (pictured above). I can't remember what power he was running but I gather he was working a Yaesu FT-1000MP, the same radio as mine. Thanks for the nice contact Terry and I hope you got some Africa!!