On the edge

  A blogpost just on the edge of winter/springtime. At a special date today, a once in a 4 year opportunity to make a blogpost on the 29th of February. During the (work)week I've less time for radio. But this evening I thought of giving it a try to work 2 new ones. XU7GNY from Cambodia and H40WA from Temotu province. If FT8 would not be existing I don't think I would ever work these entities at all just because my time is limited. With FT8 you can let the computer call, it does the job for you. This evening again I was called away from the shack several times. But in between the computer managed to work XU7GNY on 30m and 40m quite fast. Later on, H40WA was worked on 20m after about 10 minutes of calling. 

The DX purists will probably find this disgusting. DX should be hard work. Finding the right split frequency and find out which direction the DX operator goes. Oh yes, I've experienced this a lot of times in the past. And yes, that is the way we did DX which takes a lot of time to contact the DX at all if you can even hear it. We are now in the future of HAMradio. Working DX will take less time and less good equipment so you have time and money for other things of interest. After all, who cares if you have worked 340 DXCC in the last 50 years? We all collect DXCC for our own interest.