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Thunder from down under

This ‘bloggy’ is becoming more of a Twitter with something rolling out almost daily. This morning I woke up at about 06.45 local time. The plan was to check 80m but I got distracted by some household chores that took longer than expected. One hour later I fired up the shack and got me some DX spots to fill the bandmaps. On the target band 80m I saw a spot for 8R1PY. Definitely a new DXCC. And with the S-meter showing S7. Some callers but not a huge pile up. He sent his call and ‘UP 3’. I quickly set the QSX and sent my call. He returned with “OK5?”. There aren’t many active OK5 prefixes and most of the time they mess up OQ5 to OK5 so I sent my call twice and there you go. New DXCC on 80m. Sweet! And most of all: easy! Not new but always nice to work was TF/DL2JRM/P. Also easy but quite weak. Maybe it’s the /P setup.

I started CQ’ing and soon I got called by a quite loud ZL4PW. Sweet! Then K5NTT called me from Arkansas. Then ZL3NB, regular guest W6OAR and ZL4AS in a row. That’s 3 ZL’s on a Sunday morning. Then K9OT called me followed by ZL1AIH. ZL #4! And California. And we’re only calling 10 minutes so far. Fifteen minutes later a weak and noisy signal messes with the noise floor. Must be a ZL, what else HI HI. The ZL3 part was easy but it’s way past my SR and after his SS so the path is dying. Finally I manage to log ZL3JT and gave him 549. ZL #5. Thunder from Down Under!

Around 09.30 UTC I work ZL/AI5P on 30m. Not quite as thrilling as working antipodes on 80m but given the time of the day (pretty late) it was a surprise to hear ZL. But my plan was to work 12m and once there I log 9J2FM with 2 calls. I tried yesterday but I didn’t persevere then. I call CQ and I’m pleasantly surprised to hear Z21BB call me. I’m not sure but I think that’s a new one on 12m. In between a batch of UA I copy 9J2BO coming back me. Call CQ and the DX will come! I work some more on 12m but it’s only UA and similar.

Then I drop to 17m. TF/DL2JRM/P is loud so I work him. I work a lot of EU on 18072, and some UA9. Then a PY calls me followed by PZ5RA and to close the series another PY. A Sunday morning full of DX, with the ZL’s on 80m totally unexpected with the vertical only suspended as an inverted L. Working DX on the low bands once again proves to be more a matter of timing and propagation than hardware.

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