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?

Wow!....What a test

The big events of fall in ham radio are the CQ magazine contests. This weekend we had the CQ WW RTTY contest. Every year a lot of people are traveling to hot spots as Caribbean, North West Africa, Galapagos and so on, just to have the best conditions to win the test. On the other hand a lot of hams around the world are waiting to contact with exotic call sign and rare ham radio entities just sitting in their ordinary shacks. The bands get on fire for 48 hours. I cannot express the feeling of having so many stations on the air on usually quiet bands. You can change thoroughly your opinion about propagation just participating in this event. I made 811 contacts in SOAB category, 300 more than last year. Among them very rare dx countries. That is exactly the reason I join the test every year. And I can say this one was a very rich one. Spiros (SV8CS) was working only in 15m and during the contest we had a lot fun chatting about how the things were going. By the end of weekend we found wide open the 10m band, a band that is dead for years. It kept an hour or so but it was enough to work South America and Caribbean stations and the famous HC8N. What a pleasant surprise! MixW was a real performer and the FT1000MP as well as the ACOM1000 worked without complains. But most of all what made the difference this time was the Honor Roll plague in front of me....

Autumn

Heavy weather above my antenna system. Autumn is here. We had the first thunderstorm of the season with 60mm of rain just in a few hours. It was very welcomed of course after 4 tedious quite dry months. Fortunately I had no casualties in the shack.
But the event that sealed the start of Autumn was my 60th birthday and the present of my XYL, SW8KOJ: a lovely TM-D710. Thank you very much my dear and many Happy Returns to come and share.

Just before Autumn

The summer is over. It has left some of its heat behind but it is clear that is gone. So I am back in my main shack again after a long vacation time. Everything it looks perfect except of propagation conditions. By incidence today, after a very long period, sun appears a tiny spot (Uaoo...). The 24 circle is very lazy and denies stubbornly to start and the worst we have to live with that. As the future is not so promising, let me focus in the past. With your permission I will review some results of my previous ham activities.
The greatest is the Honor Roll achievement. Of course we celebrated it a bit early but now I have the proofs. So after of almost 30 years of DX hunting I am officially listed in Honor Roll with 329/333 entities. I proudly show you the ARRL matrix, the Lapel pin and I invite you to share with me my happiness for this achievement.
In the contesting activities I have to present you my certificate in World Wide RTTY WPX Contest as 1st in Greece and the 6th position worldwide in the spring EU PSK DX Contest. Well obviously I am not a big gun but no doubt I am a little pistol!
During summer we continue testing D-STAR with SV8CS, SV8RV and SV3KH. The real fun will start with the installation of a D-Star local repeater.
Finally I wish to all of you a nice winter and lots of such moments in your ham career.

DV sequel

Well D-Star is a new toy. Recently Spiros, SV8CS got a IC-92 too. So we enjoyed several nice contacts in DV mode. For the first time I heard digital voice decoded by my little handy. It isn't like FM but the quality is prety acceptable and it doesn't tire your ears. And it is very cool to watch all this data on your screen like callsign, sort messages or GPS spots during the QSO. Finally you get a feeling that you are crossing a border in communications world. I suppose a similar feeling hams had turning from AM to SSB. In the mean time Denis, SV8RV, who is in W6 land right now, made a lot of noise accessing the SZ1SV repeater from San Francisco. An other milestone! We have just to wait for a D-Star repeater in our area. In the photo you can see also my Eee PC 900 near the IC-E92D on my shack. It is so small and portable that it will be an excellent companion for it. I really feel sorry for all these technophobic folks. They don't know what they really loose. The summer is going...and the sun refuses to get up.

Au bord de la mer

August is near! The middle of the summer. The six meters band is dying for this season. No major dxpeditions around, no spots on the sun. For now and then I will spend the time in my favorite beach bar relaxing, enjoying cold beer, eating light meals and swimming in fresh sea water. But bad habits can not be cut. The forgotten hand held got alive and keep me company again. I have to give reports to good old friends how things are going describing what is moving in the beach and finally invite them to join me. Actually you are all invited.

D-Star. First tests

D-Star is a new standard in digital communications developed by ICOM. Its popularity is increasing rapidly recently. So I decided to give it a try and now I know why. Coming back from Friedrichshafen I brought with me a new toy: The IC-E92D. My good friend Denis, SV8RV, had the receiver and the decoding software to do the job. It is really an other world. The picture is talking itself. Dedicated calls by callsign, messages, GPS data, automatic replies, internet connection and many other things are available to play with. In my first feeling DV mode came to give a push to the boring local VHF and UHF frequencies. So it is very welcome.