Flying up the leaderboard with Tango Juliet Nine

It's been a hell of a week for me. I hardly touched any radio after Monday. With all that was going on I had no HF time at all. By yesterday morning (Friday), I had a very poor showing on the TJ9PF Dxpedition EI leaderboard on Clublog. I had only worked them on ONE lowly band slot. This just would not do !

In the space of 24 hours I have jumped from being near the bottom of the pile (at this moment 48 EIs have worked them) to being in 9th place with EIGHT band slots. Yes, that means I've worked them on seven band slots in a day! And it feels good! The most dogged contact was on 30m RTTY last night. I started calling them at 11pm and finally got them in the log at one minute past one am. Yes, 1:01am. Then I went to bed, with a smile on my face!

TJ Cameroon was a new country for me on 10 metres when I worked them on phone yesterday. Since then I nabbed them on 20m CW, 30m CW, 20m SSB, 30m RTTY, 12m SSB, 15m RTTY, 17m CW and 15m SSB.

After all these efforts, I am now in 9th place on the EI leaderboard, just behind EI2CN, Doug, who lives a few miles from my QTH. We are both on eight band slots. Leading the way, somewhat unsurprisingly, is John EI7BA, with no less than 20 band slots. What a man. He really is Ireland's supreme DXer. Congrats John. Hats off! Congrats also to my friend Ark EI9KC (a member of the Kilo Charlie fraternity HI!) who is in fourth place with 12 band slots. Nice going Ark. The new antenna is working well!

Watch out for good propagation on 10 metres. The solar flux index has been over 100 for a few days now, and the sunspot number has peaked at 100. I've bagged a few new ones on 10m. More of that later . . .