Thursday, February 23, 2023

The mysterious MZV72 station?


 Worked this station tuesday evening after I was intrigued by the callsign. 

The question is: is it a pirate or a military cadet station?

Worked royal airforce cadets before on 60m digital and phone. But they always had a MRE call. Searching on the internet didn't reveal much. After posting it on the 60m FB page DB6LL Hartmut came with something he found at DXmaps.com. He discovered the stations locator (if real?). I discovered more:


There seems to be a MZV11 and 40 as well, all from the same locator. When searching for other stations on this locator I found the call M72ZV and M40ZV as well, looking the same but more in amateurradio call format. So I found G3TXL Angus from this area with exact the same locator. I decided to write him an e-mail for clarification since his locator is exactly the same as the MZV stations he would probabely know. Angus was very fast responding to my e-mails and didn't know about the stations. However he happened to know another HAM who's also in the military and at least knows about cadet stations. He assured the MZV stations are legal and cadet station. The locator they use is probabely not their real locator and they change calls regulary. It is a secret from which part of the military this is. As far as I know in the Netherlands we are allowed to contact any user on the HAM bands that is legally transmitting there. It might not be allowed in other countries.

Sunday, February 19, 2023

ARRL DX CW Contest

 Just participating in this contest for a short time. Working USA/Canada only is a bit.....well....boring. But anyway, I had a goal: working fellow blogger VE9KK. I did work him on both 10m and 15m. I also worked blogger VE3VN again on 15m. I found that the fun would be concentrating on the far away west-coast of both USA/Canada, so I did. I only worked 10m, 15 and 20m. Most contacts were made on 10m. 75 QSO in total.


Yellow=10m Lightblue=15m darkblue=20m

Monday, February 13, 2023

#60m Equatorial Guinea worked

 


No luck working Bouvet Isl. I got a message from Bernard PB7Z that he worked them around 18:30 UTC when they were loud. When I went to my radio and had everything switched on they were gone. I doubt if I had any chance to work them at all. Bernard has high power and a 2 element SteppIR. I only have 100W and my experimental halo. Till hours after 3Y0J left 17m FT8 I saw still people trying desperatly. Well, I'm shure there will be another chance in the future. 
Just when I wanted to finish the day and before I switched off I saw 3C3CA spotted on 60m. I did not see them before and it would be a new one. 15 minutes later I was lucky, another new one on the 60m band. A good day after all.