My antennas didn't blow away in yesterday's storm so I carried on testing my vertical centre fed dipole. CONDX not brilliant but managed a few rubberstamp exchanges (Asiatic Russia, Grenada, Canaries, W8) and was happy enough.
12m got tired and went to bed early so eventually I cruised down to 40m to listen to the evening chaos. I parked on 7.03 and busied myself doing nothing useful in the shack with 40m as the background music.
DL4SU came up out of the mush, eventually completed his QSO and called again. I couldn't resist his call. It was a very satisfying QSO: we were riding a fairly deep QSB & had QRM adding to the fun, so worked accordingly.
No rubber stamp QSO this. It was a full traditional QSO with all the trimmings and some extras. Greatly daring I used some schoolboy German. "
Do you speak German?" came the question -"
Genug fuer das QSO" was the reply -and we were away!! It was lovely. I know English is a convenient lingua franca amongst many hams but using a little of the other guy's language gives me a kick and judging by the responses, it's appreciated some of the time.
Which is more than can be said for my CW.
Just as we were completing -QRG 7.03MHz- we had stout a individualist dump SSB all over us, a real lapful. We still completed. As I filled in the log I realised I had a foot wide grin all over my face.
Strange what a genuine QSO can do: I'd made human contact and maybe a new friend. I'd used a little German. CONDX were against us but we had made it. Rubber stamp QSOs? You can keep 'em!!
Vic /still grinning......
