Days 6, 7 and 8

These days have been good, no drama like on day #5 where I nearly didn’t manage to have a contact.

Day #6 was a 40m day with both QSOs being on 40m, the first to S57O, Franc in Slovenia and a couple of hours later I worked IZ2EWR, Peter in Italy, not too far from the Alps and Switzerland.

Day #7 was also a day for 40m with two nice QSOs, OH6IO, Kari in Finland and RD3ZV, Alex in Russia.  It’s already quite clear to me that during the week, 40m is going to be the band I use most as it’s open in the evenings and early mornings when I’m likely to be making my QSOs.

Day #8 started with me working EA5KB/P, Pepi on 20m after I’d been out and collected the bread for the week.  In the afternoon I spoke to DL8KAC, Vlad in Germany and then I’ve had other contacts throughout the day and into the evening on both 20m and 40m.  It’s been quite a frustrating day because there are lot of Italians calling CQ contest who only want to work other Italians.  I enjoy giving away points in contests so it’s a shame I’ve not been able to do that today.

I’ve had a quick look at the countries I’ve worked into so far and they’re all within Europe and this is a limitation of my aerial.  I know that it’s far from ideal and this is something that will be resolved as soon as I’m able to do anything about it but that won’t happen until the weather improves and I’m able to get a method of mounting one end of the Windom I have up at chimney height and work out the method of supporting it at the far end of the garden.  Until that happens I doubt I’ll manage any QSOs outside Europe.

I would love to have a map on this blog showing what countries I’ve worked.  I’ve not found any automatic way to do this yet so it may have to be done manually and I’m looking into that.  If anyone knows a good way to generate a map of shaded in countries from an exported .adif file then please let me know.

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