Sunday, November 13, 2022

DX sunday - Saved by PB7Z

 This morning I already noticed the bands would be full of DX. I hoped for some nice DX contacts. But with the WAE RTTY contest on it was a bit difficult to receive the DX. Talking about contests, I totally forgot the PA-beker contest today.


I only had time in the afternoon/evening today. And while I write this I still hope for some DX showing up on 60m. I saw TL8ZZ Central African Republic) and FJ/SP9FIH (St. Barts) yesterday evening but was too tired to continue calling in the huge pile-ups.

Today my QSOs almost didn't happen, I had the luck I had some back talk with PB7Z via internet. We were both trying for TL8ZZ on 12m. But after one hour trying I decided to QSY 10m to try. Just when I switched to 10m I got a message from Bernard that TL8ZZ was replying to me. So I immidiatly switched back to 12m and made the contact after all. Wow, if Bernard had not seen it I would have missed them. After that I went to 10m and worked them after calling once. At the same time FJ/SP9FIH was on at 10m only 1 KHz above TL8ZZ. I turned the beam and made the contact. The benefit of having a directional antenna! Talking about that, a bit later Bernard warned me T88WA appeared on 20m. I could barely see him between the RTTY sigs. But I managed to get him to reply to me. Only the RR73 was just on the stream that I could not see. Luckely Bernard has a beam and came to the rescue, He received the RR73 and send me a copy to verify. Well, it was a bit strange....something like a hybrid contact. Some will say this is not valid, however I'm in the log...


On 30m I worked V51LZ (Namibia) and HB0/HB9LCW (Liechtenstein) both new band ones. 

Hey I do some SSB as well if time allows. The problem is that I have to be in the shack actually. FT8 is done mostly remote from my laptop/tablet or phone. On SSB I worked Phil K4OMD from Ft. Lauderdale FL. He is a belgium guy and we talked in our native language Dutch. I also worked V31XX (Belize) on 10m SSB after I worked him on 12m SSB yesterday.

Thanks to PB7Z this was a successful DX day.


2 comments:

MadDogMcQ said...

Well done on your efforts to secure the TL8ZZ contact. I had a similar situation this weekend where I had to work very hard to secure a contact. He got my 73 and I was in his log but I couldn't get his. I tried over and over many time and eventually cracked it. All part of the fun I guess, lol.

Stay safe Bas. 73, Tom, M7MCQ.

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello Tom, yes....sometimes a QSO is easy and sometimes it's hard to even complete one. But in the end I like the difficult contacts the most. I can even remember the most difficult one about 30 years ago. It was with a military station in Cambodja on 11m. Well, that might be another story....73, Bas