Finally Some Success

It’s been an especially dry week-plus in the N9KM radio shack. That illness I brought back from Europe stretched into a third week. I am just now finally kicking it after two rounds of antibiotics. Kid #3 and I made two college visits this week. All the kids are home for a brief, two-week span before the older ones begin filtering out again. Which means friends circulating through the house. My shack is in the main traffic area of our home, so if strangers are around, I am not operating.

I did have a fun FT8 run Wednesday evening. I was waiting for our youngest to come home from scooping ice cream and decided to fire up the IC-7300 and see what was happening. After about 10 minutes of operating, I had yet to complete a contact despite the bands being in decent shape. I was about to hang it up when I finally made a contact with a Canadian station.

Breaking the seal, digitally speaking, opened the flood.

Over the next 45 minutes my signal really got out. Two Czech contacts. Bulgaria. Hungary. Romania. Bosnia. European and Asiatic Russia. Croatia. Poland. Congo. And one US station who hunted me.

Not a bad collection, and almost all of these were new countries on 20 meters.

The cherries on top, though, were two ATNOs: Turks & Caicos, after missing them on phone a week earlier, and Saudi Arabia. I’ve been chasing a Saudi contact for months. They seem to pop up regularly but never respond to my calls. HZ1TT teased me once Wednesday, responding with a -24, but I couldn’t break through to complete the QSO. About 30 minutes later I gave him another shot and this time we completed the exchange.

Countries #137 and 138 for me. Hopefully verifications will soon follow.

Speaking of teases, in the midst of all of this, multiple Kazakh stations were operating. The Asiatic Russian station I contacted was not too far from the Kazakh border, but that success did not carry over.

Finally, an Alaskan station that has been active all week was online as well. Each time he popped up, I made a run, but like every other night this week could not nab the last state I need for FT8 WAS.

That did not take anything away from the most enjoyable evening I’ve had on radio in some time. And it highlighted one advantage digital has over other modes. I’m not sure, outside of contest weekends, you can have this kind of run on phone or CW. Or at least not with the way conditions have been at my QTH recently.