After band conditions being pretty poor for the past several days and hearing very little on the higher HF bands, this morning 12m seemed to be a bit livelier than it had been so I turned the beam towards the east and tuned around. I soon picked up a station CQing at about 25+ wpm, quite weak but I did pick up
??/QRP so I continued to listen and after listening to 3 or 4 calls made the station to be BD8SZ/QRP - he was about 339 at best and didn't pause and listen for very long between calls. I turned up the speed on my keyer to match his speed and after calling him 3 times managed the contact and was pretty well pleased !
Next bit of fun was working VU2NXM @ 1601, lots of stations calling him but I managed in just 3 or 4 tries.
I then turned the antenna to the USA, there wasn't much doing and I could see from the reverse beacon network that my signal wasn't yet very strong there. But I came across a pile of NA stations calling what was obviously some interesting DX but couldn't hear the DX. I rotated the beam back listening all the time, the NA callers slowly faded and then I could hear 'the DX' - 9L1A, not very strong at about 559. Just as I got the beam lined up properly he'd developed a significant pile-up and decided to go split calling '9L1A UP', so I quickly equalised the VFOs, turned on SPLIT mode and tuned my TX up 1.5 and worked him second call!
I also had a nice QRP surprise on Saturday evening when I worked WA8REI on what seemed a dead 20m band @ 2100. An hour after working Ken an email arrived from him with a recording of my CQ call - first time I've heard myself.
Three all-time new DXCC entities on 12m in one Funday - chuffed to bits!!
