Saturday, October 15, 2011

A funny (ha ha) thing happened to me this evening, DX-wise

It was a gorgeous fall evening in central North Carolina. Temp about 72F, low humidity, light breeze, sun low on the horizon, no clouds. I joined the wife on the back porch, where she (a talented painter) was doing some artwork of the back garden. I hooked up my FT817ND QRP swiss army knife rig on the back deck (which I hardly ever do, but I wanted to watch the wife do some of her lovely art work).

No sooner had I fired up the 817 and hooked it to the hex beam than I heard the bands ALIVE. I tuned to 12 meters and heard T32C working split on CW. Second call, in the log! Not a new QSO with T32C, but 5 watts from US East Coast is not too bad!

Then I heard a watery, fluttery signal 1 kHz down. The FT817ND CW, unfiltered is wide as a barn door (which is no problem for me, I can do the signal processing and filtering in my head if needed!). I tuned down and heard the callsign 9M6XRO! Wow, new DX, never heard this one before. I called once with the 817, unsuccessfully (no pileup yet, he was working simplex). So I ran tearing and yelling through the house, upstairs to the shack, fired up the amp, and turned on the Flex 3000. By this time he was working split, so I moved the TX up one and got him on the first call! Number 287 in the log!!!

Kinda neat that I heard him on the 817 on the hex, then ran up to work him on the Flex. I really love those 817 rigs, so versatile and capable. You can do a lot with 5 watts. And thank the DX gods for 9M6!

73 and good DX!

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