My one and only contact in the IOTA contest was a new one!!

For a variety of reasons I was unable to dedicate myself to the IOTA contest at the weekend. I did, however, get a chance to listen in on proceedings at around midnight on Saturday. The bands were not packed with contest activity as I might have expected but there was more activity than usual nonetheless.

While working on a video editing project I was listening to VK7ZE on 14.220. He was faint enough in QSB, coming up and down from 4/1 to 5/3. I listened for about half an hour as he worked the contest and he seemed to be getting into Europe quite well from Tasmania.

Then he seemed to hit a quiet patch. He called QRZ IOTA contest a couple of times and nobody went back to him. So I decided to key up and call him and what do you know, he comes straight back with my callsign, my serial number and his IOTA number. I have him 59 001 EU-115. And that was it - my first Tasmania!!