Hallelujia for TJ3AY - finally I get to put him in the log

It's been an interesting few days. While I have not been altogether too active CQing on the bands, I have done plenty of listening and tuning. It's actually very rewarding to scan the various bands. You never know what you might find. Indeed I have often said, as have many other more experienced experts, that listening is at least 50% of radio. Didn't some wisecrack once say that you have two ears and one mouth, and they should be used in that ratio? That certainly applies to radio. (No jokes about CW please!)

It was while scanning the bands on Saturday that I came across a strength nine signal on 15 metres, who seemed to be working a bit of a pile. Then I heard the magic letters and numbers, Tango Juliet Three Alpha Yankee. Cameroon! A new country if I could bag him.

TJ3AY has been very active lately on a number of bands, but has understandably been running some big pile-ups because Cameroon is no doubt a rare one for many. On the few occasions I have heard him, working him has been impossible because even on a 5 and 10 kHz "up" split, the pile-ups are still too big to break with 100 watts on a vertical.

So you can imagine my surprise when he heard me after just two or three calls on simplex on 21.210 USB. It was a short QSO - an exchange of reports and nothing else - but I did thank him for a brand new country. It was the highlight of a weekend in which I managed to nab a few interesting bits and bobs.

These included A45XR in Oman on both 40m and 15m CW. Oman was a new country for me on both those bands. I was disappointed but somewhat not surprised not to make it through on 80m CW over the course of a few nights trying. I even heard him on Saturday night starting his CQ on simplex and called him but he couldn't hear me, so I don't suppose he's going to hear me through a pile-up. Ah well, I will keep trying! Also new was YV4EH, Bill in Valencia, Venezuela. I had worked Bill last midsummer on 17m SSB and was delighted to catch him on 15m SSB where Venezuela was a new country for me on that band.

One other QSO of note was R1QAP on 30m CW. The station is based in a monastery on an island in a lake in Russia. Looks nice in his QRZ photo. The Monastery is alled Spaso-kamenny.

Here's my latest band standings updated since last time (previous update Nov 29th 2010):

Total DXCCs worked: 186

160M: 30 DXCCs worked (0 - no change)
80M: 79 (+7 Doing well here but need 21 to get to 100)
40M: 125 (+5)
30M: 95 (+13 Racing towards the century here)
20M: 138 (+3)
17M: 108 (+4)
15M: 110 (+9)
12M: 66 (+1)
10M: 35 (0 - waiting for some good openings!)
6M: 53 (0)
2M: 10 (0)