Last weekend my plan was to spend some time in the shack and have some fun again. Mission accomplished. It looked promising on Friday late in the afternoon. See my previous post below. The low A/K values helped to work some DX on 17m. On Saturday I wanted to do better so I cranked up the tower. Too bad by then A rose to 27. Still I worked a few JA’s on 17m. At the same time a pair of PY slipped through too.
In the morning during the Oceania DX Contest I worked a few stations from Down Under or thereabout (VK, ZL, 9M, YB)… on 15m! With signals not even too weak. Great! Two weeks ago I received a nice certificate for the 2007 edition. I worked a handful Oceanians on 40/80m then and qualified for ON Country Winner. Maybe I will again?
By 15.00 utc I was brave / desperate enough to call CQ on 12m. Some EU and to my surprise a UA9. Cherry on top was being called by ZS6EU there. Woohoo! Early in the evening I worked a bunch of W3 calls in the PA QSO Party on 20m. I expected more of that but 14 MHz was dying. Later on I made about 30 QSO in EU Sprint on 40m and two QSY’s to 20m when asked. I didn’t want to participate ‘for real’ because I am not in a competitive mood. I like EU Sprint a lot but I always end up low. To make this thing fun EU should participate massively. 40m wasn’t easy: there was an RTTY contest going on taking more spectrum than the digimodes normally do. And VK9DWX took a big chunk by listening too far from his own QRG. The remainder of the evening was spent on 30m. I worked USA and VK there but the signals were weak and not too many activity there so I went to bed at around 23.00 utc.
In the morning 30m was dead (or no one around?) and nothing happened on 20m. I managed to work NH7O on 40m though which I believe is my first KH6 on 7 MHz. Then on to work some more VK/ZL on 40m. No strong signals but they sure drew a EU crowd. Lots of bad manners there too. Around that time an announcement on the cluster mentioned Paolo I2UIY SK. Unfortunately this got confirmed later. So now the guy who imported the Sprint from NA to EU is no longer with us. I have never met Paolo in person but we exchanged a few emails in the past on various topics. Too bad I can’t find his writings about EU Sprint anymore. For years he maintained the EU Sprint pages on his own web site but those pages seem to be no longer online. EDIT: They are now on the EU Sprint pages: http://www.eusprint.com/index.php?page=111&lang=g and http://www.eusprint.com/index.php?page=112&lang=g.
This past weekend there were two expeditions active: VK9DWX and 9L1X. I tried to work both a few times but I didn’t persevere and moved on fast. It’s not my style to criticize a DX operator’s practice PUBLICLY so I won’t go there this time either. What bothered me way more is the behavior of the *beep* *beeping* *beepholes* on the pile up side. Some guys just DO NOT listen. They send their call 4 or 5 times in a row. During that time the DX worked a station and was already listening for another. And what about RTFM’ing for the ‘split’ button? It was a crying shame. Since my plan for the weekend was to have fun I didn’t bother and parked myself somewhere else and called CQ. Guess what? It was good to work some DX again!