5J0R San Andres on 17 RTTY makes it 15 slots!

This is a short video showing my Icom IC-756PRO decoding 5J0R on 18 Mhz RTTY just after I had worked this wonderful dxpedition for a 15th band slot.

As an addendum to yesterday's rather excited post, I have found that in the latest T33A Clublog upload, my callsign is not in their log. However, on investigation I find that the callsign EA2KC is in there for both 20m SSB and 20m CW. I am familiar with Jose EA2KC and as far as I know he operates exclusively on phone, and does not do CW. All the cluster spots for him for the past two years have been SSB only. So I suspect that Banaba have busted my call, by one character. Ah well. I will try to work them again, but if not, it's not the end of the world. I'm sure they will correct it for me.

Winter is a good time for contacts on 80 metres

It is well known that the early bird catches the worm. It is also well known that I am fond of my bed. However, in the past year or so I have made a special effort to get up early when known DX is to be found on the 80 metre band, which is a challenging band for a ham with small antennas. Of course, 80 metres is a winter time band, and DX contacts are rare during the summer. Last winter, I finally got 100 countries confirmed on this band after taking part in CQWW CW on 80m only in late November 2012.

This morning, I got the call from Declan EI6FR at 6:38am to say that the 5J0R San Andres dxpedition was on 80m CW with a good signal. I went immediately to the shack and sure enough, he was a 599 on my inverted v dipole. So I switched on the Acom 1000 and while it was warming up I started listening for the split.

Within a short time I was calling with 400 watts. He was working plenty of Europeans. But I knew as time went on and the rest of the EU went into daylight I would have a good chance. Sure enough, at around 06.56UTC, I heard him coming back with the magic "EI2KC 5NN". And I gave him "RR DE EI2KC 5NN 5NN TU". Another new one on 80 metres, and slot #10 with this dxpedition.

But it didn't end there. A short time later I could hear them on 40 metres SSB, on 7.165, working 5 to 15 up. So I sat on 10Khz up and called for a while. After about ten minutes, he came back very clearly with "Echo India Two Kilo Charlie Five Nine". And I gave him a 59 and entered slot #11 into my log. I now have San Andres HK0-S on every band from 80m through 10m. Last Friday night, I didn't have this DXCC at all!

Wake Atoll and San Andres logged - two new ones in one day

It has been a great day on the bands here in the shack of EI2KC at IO63TQ. I nabbed 5J0R, the San Andres dxpedition, on no fewer than five band slots today, including two RTTY slots, an SSB slot and two CW slots. That was beyond my wildest expectations. Although they are only in the Caribbean and therefore relatively easy to work from EI, it was the first day of their activity and pile-ups were significant. That was DXCC #296 (official DXCC designation HK0-S).

I really didn't expect to even hear K9W on Wake Atoll, but I got a tip-off from Don EI6IL at tea time that they were weak but workable on 20m SSB and sure enough, I actually logged them with one call. I think it was because they were weak that most Europeans were not hearing them; hence it was easy to get through. I was beaming north, so right across the pole.

It's all water and ice between here and there. I was really, really chuffed, and somewhat relieved, to get them so quickly. That was DXCC #297 (official DXCC designation KH9). I've actually worked 303 DXCC entities, but six of these are deleted so the current DXCC tally stands at 297. Just three more and I will be at the magic 300 worked.

Below is a video showing 5J0R's signal on 10m CW just immediately after I worked them. Sorry about the volume level. It was a bit high for the recording.