7O6T: 4 hits in 28 minutes

Yesterday afternoon I was running around to find an affordable drill bit to make a 35 mm diameter hole in reinforced concrete. Those things can be expensive! A professional 35 mm carbide drill bit plus holder would cost me 120 Euro! I know this store charges way too much for everything so I went away. After some looking and driving I found a kit containing four different diameters for just under 24 Euros. A bargain! But it needed a different shaft than the one my heavy duty drill has. So I went to another DIY store and bought a conventional drill head with an SDS shaft to hold the hex shaped diamond drill. Now what has this got to do with ham radio?

While looking for the drill and other parts, I drove around for 2 hours in warm spring-ish weather. One of the better days lately. Or at least one of the better days I didn’t need to go to work. So I was thinking: why the #$|@ are you driving from DIY-store to hardware store, from town to town while you should be cranking up the tower and work Yemen!
When I got home, I ate and went outside. Crank up tower 2/3rd, put up WARC dipole, appreciate not becomming wet from the rain and not been blown over by the wind. I reconnected all coaxes and control cables, fire up the shack, look for 7O6T. I can be short: 4 hits in just under twenty eight minutes. 15 SSB, 17 CW + SSB and 20 CW. I tried for half an hour to get them on 40 CW but the pile up was unruly and there were jammers like ususal. Still: an all time new one, 4 times in 28 minutes…

This morning they were weak on 15. Common sense says it’s too early and the Clublog stats back this up. So off outside to drill the hole. That went like a breeze! Even with the cheap drill bit! Finished the job (pass a new tube for our water well pumping installation), had lunch and came up back in the shack. And as I type this, I just worked them on 15 CW too. That makes 5x Yemen. I hope to get a shot at some of the other bands as well. I’ll focus on CW and skip the low bands since I don’t have any antenna up right now for 80/160.

I also worked 6O0CW two times and a C31 on 40 CW. Some of my work done and a new DXCC in the log, and it’s only Saturday afternoon!