Category: QSO

Managed to work another Australian station (VK6WB in Perth, Australia) tonight on 20m PSK using just 35W. According to qrz.com, it’s 18525.7 km away. That’s 1.9 mW/km!

I had to do a double take and wait until he called a couple times to make sure fldigi was decoding it properly. He was as loud as most of the other US stations on the waterfall.

This breaks my previous record for QSO distance (with VK3TDX) by a few thousand km.

Really loving this hobby now.

I was tuning around the radio last night while waiting for Fedora 18 beta to install on the computer and heard 9A9A from Croatia calling loud and clear. He had quite the pileup going and it was interesting listening to him work everyone. A little while later after the pile up cleared away, I called him and managed to get him on the first attempt. First contact with the new antenna and it was a DX from almost 7900 km away! His signal was easily 59+ like he was next door, and I got a 59 back from him.

About 40 minutes later, I heard UT2IJ in the Ukraine calling and working a pileup too. Rather than wait, I responded and managed to work him on the first try too from 9100 km away! His signal was pretty good, a 58 and I got a 57 back.

Looks like the antenna is working pretty well.