A great weekend on the bands

What a great weekend on the bands! It was raining here all day Saturday so it was a day for the shack. The Clipperton Island dxpedition was winding up by Saturday so it was tough going getting more slots. But I managed 10 metres SSB (finally, after an hour and a half of QSB and much QRM) and later in the night I got 20m RTTY to bring my total number of band slots up to 14. That far exceeded any expectations I had. It was a real delight to work them on every band from 80m through 10m.

The Progress window of my logging program showing my TX5K slots.

It was one highlight of a great weekend on the bands, the rest of which is briefly outlined here:

5W0W - Samoa - 20m SSB - made it through a huge pile-up by numbers
WL7E - Alaska - 17m SSB - a great contact through a huge EU pile
H44G - Solomon Islands - 20m CW - strong signals for a short time here and I was in the log after a few minutes
VR2KF - Hong Kong - 17m CW - new band slot
A92IO - Bahrain - Dave gave me a new band when he heard me on 20m CW
XW0ZJZ - Laos - 20m CW at 19:37 local time. Great signal for that time of night
VE7SNC - British Columia - 17m SSB
KL2YV - Alaska - 20m SSB my second contact with Alaska this weekend. Took longer but gave me a new slot
T6MO - Afghanistan - 80m CW. Saw this one on the reverse beacon and jumped at it before he was spotted on the clusters. New country on 80m!
V47JA - St. Kitts & St. Nevis - 40m SSB - new band slot. Worked first call with 400w and my Butternut vertical.
HP1/IZ6BRN - Panama - 20m CW
H44G - Solomon Islands - 15m CW. New country on 15 metres! Again big signal. Only took a few calls. He went QRT just after he logged me
DU1EV - Philippines - 15m SSB. Working a 1khz split, which is a bit unorthodox, but got him when he called #2s.
XW0ZJZ - Laos - 17m CW - new country on 17 metres !!
KL3IH - Alaska - 20m SSB - Alaska is rare and difficult to work but this was my third contact into Alaska over the weekend!! He had a huge pile-up but I waited until propagation dropped and EU quietened down.
V73NS - Marshall Islands - 20m CW - another huge thrill was working Neil on only my second band slot ever for this DXCC!!
9M4SLL - Spratly - 30m CW
J88DR - St Vincent - 30m CW
HS0ZEE - Thailand - 30m CW - new country on 30m!

Here are my totals on the bands (worked/confirmed)
160m:  66/51
80m: 128/104
40m: 187/140
30m: 197/142
20m: 250/190
17m: 250/172
15m: 235/149
12m: 221/153
10m: 214/153

Total: 285/256

TX5K Clipperton update - seven slots now

From having just one lowly slot early Monday morning, I finished Monday with a total of seven. Having worked TX5K on 40m CW yesterday morning, I came home from work yesterday evening and got busy! I spent an hour trying on 15m CW without success. I had to go and do some shopping around 8.45pm. I came back a short time later and worked them on 17m SSB with two calls! Then I went back to 15m CW and they were stronger than before! I worked them after a few calls.

This is the DXA online log for TX5K. Looks pretty cool! Here's my seven slots.

The big surprise of the night was to hear them strong on 12m CW at 9.30pm local time. To my astonishment, I worked them with my first call. Soon after that I had bagged them on 20m CW too, plus I managed a QSO on 30m, where I worked them just one KC up from their frequency.

This morning, I didn't get to the radio until about 8.40am and although TX5K was audible on 80m CW, it was perhaps a little too late for trying. Hopefully they will be on that slot again in the coming days and I will try to get them earlier.

Hats off to John EI7BA who has no fewer than SIXTEEN slots so far! Wow!

PS: Today is the third anniversary of my callsign EI2KC. Delighted that I've hit 285 DXCC.... now the drive towards 300 begins!!