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For the record: WAE CW

Last week DL8WPX sent out a mail about the updated web site for the WAE contest. It showed that some ON3 held the Belgian record for CW LP with a whistle score. I knew for sure that the current CW LP record was held by ON4IT/A who beat me in 2002.

I discovered WAE CW in by accident 2001 together with ON4IT, who is even younger than me. We got to know each other on VHF because we lived in the same town and we were both youngsters. We got our HF tickets at about the same time and were looking for some DX on 20m that Saturday in August. The year 2001 offered propagation and we were eager to work USA. That was such a blast being new on HF. Only we didn’t know why all those guys were sending ‘QTC?’. Later on we looked that up and decided that it would be fun to try the next year. So we practiced copying QTC’s and off we went in 2002. I was still living at my parent’s place equipped with this impressive antenna farm: one wire and ATU. ON4IT had even less (a shorter wire) so he went to operate ON5YR’s place. ON5YR is the one who got me hooked to contesting before bailing out himself. He has a tribander and resonant antennas for 40/80. What could I do against that? So ON4IT had better ears and a better signal so he could harvest more mults and more QTC’s. Hence ON4IT/A holds the ON record in WAE CW for LP since 2002. I didn’t break it from here in 2003 or 2004 because conditions took a plunge and I had no antennas. Later on I bought an amp and went HP. Except for 2005 which I forgot all about…

I wanted to do justice to ON4IT and our mutual history so I sent a message to DL8WPX asking to review the records and restore ON4IT as record holder. He replied that after investigating the matter, not ON4IT/A held the CW LP record but OO5ZO. That was my special prefix call in 2005 and the first WAE from here with a tower and a big yagi and resonant antennas on 40/80. So there you go: I hold the LP record for Belgium in my favorite contest and didn’t even know it.

I haven’t produced much since then in WAE CW:

My target is snatching the HP record before my LP will be crushed. It is easily done when the propagation to JA/VK/ZL and US West Coast returns in a few long years. Both for the HP record as well as the LP record. Can’t wait for that!

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