I've just reached another milestone as a radio amateur. I checked my Logbook of the World account today to find that I've just hit 200 countries confirmed on the 17 metre (18 Mhz) band. This is the second band on which I have reached or passed two centuries, having previously hit 200 on 20 metres. 17 metres is one of my favourite bands, and there is quite often excellent DX to be worked there. It is also a "safe haven" at the weekends when there are contests on.
FT5ZM update: I am still trying to work them on 15m and 17m. Unfortunately their signal on these bands is strongest during the day when I am at work. I have tried them on 15m CW for several mornings, including this morning, with no success. However, I made up for that disappointment by working them on 12m SSB, my sixth slot.
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.
Finally, after hours of trying, I managed to get the 7O6T Yemen dxpedition in the log tonight. I had just worked VP2V/NY6X on 17m CW and with the linear still running I decided to try 7O6T on the same band. It only took a few tries. But that followed prolonged periods where I was calling 7O6T on various bands since the dxpedition began just over 24 hours ago. I have put in about three or four hours calling them so far, and the pile-ups are very wide and intense. So it was a great pleasure to hear "EI2KC 5NN" coming back through the noise!!
For many operators this will be a brand new DXCC, and that's how it was for me. Yemen is my 260th DXCC worked. I look forward to chasing them on other bands! In the meantime, here's another video I made showing the pile-up on 12m earlier on (where I failed, incidentally, to work them!) Enjoy. Happy hunting!
