Tuesday, September 16, 2014

VK9NT Norfolk Island in the log on 15m CW (short path)

Norfolk Island is a very small island off eastern Australia.
A short time ago, I managed to work the VK9NT Norfolk Island dxpedition on 15 metres CW. He is very light here on the short path, and inaudible on the long path. He is working everything from EU to Africa to Japan, so I really didn't think I had a chance. But I heard a couple of stations working him just one KC up, so I knew that he didn't have a huge pile-up. I had the hexbeam pointed at around 10 degrees and gave him a shot. Within a short time, I heard (with flutter and fast QSB) what I thought was 2KC 5NN so I gave "EI2KC EI2KC ?" and he came back and gave me "EI2KC EI2KC 5NN 5NN" and then I confirmed with "RRR EI2KC 5NN 5NN 73 TU".

Fabulous. That's only my second ever QSO with this DX entity. I worked VK9NT in May 2013 on 12m CW, my only other QSO with Norfolk. I'm glad now that I recently repaired the 15m wire of my hexbeam, which had been broken for some time!

Here's a short video I made shortly after my QSO showing just how weak VK9NT was. As you can see, he is not moving the needle at all:


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