Sniffing VK9DWX

This morning, even with a blank sun, propagation turned out to be favorite to work VK8DWX in 12m band. Suddenly it occurred to me to open CW Skimmer to sniff its transmission. Excellent tool, as you can in the snap. Even with 3KHz spacing it could copy almost all activity. Some people are sceptic about what machines can do. Some other, among them and me, they just use them.

DX came back

The 24th cycle seems that accelerates during the last days. Two groups of sunspots simultaneously...that's great news indeed. This alone it would be just an interesting statistical event. I do not know if there is any connection but a lot of DX stations are heard recently. T33Z, 5U5U, 9L1X, D44AC, TO5DX, C56YK, TN5SN, and of course VK9DWX. The last one is a major DXpedition organized by BCC and delivers big signals in any band or mode. So I can claim for sure that DX came back. Enjoy it.

Talking to Mitchel

The 10m band is open more frequently last days. Is that a sign of emerging 24th cycle? We would like to believe so. Anyway, in such an opening this afternoon I had a QSO with a station ZU6M in 28.495MHz. His name was Mitchel and his voice was very delicate. So during the QSO I was tempted to take a look to qrz.com to get some info for my interlocutor. And suddenly I realized that I was talking to an 11 years old boy from South Africa. What a nice surprise indeed! I felt like this young gentleman was ready to get the baton from me. And I would be very glad to give it to him. It was really one of most distinctive moments of my amateur career and very difficult to forget. What else are going to bring us cycle 24?