Days 13, 14, 15 and 16 – Saudi Arabia!

It’s been a busy few days for me on both the wireless and in ‘real life’ but I’ve been able to keep the project going without too much trouble.

On day #13 which was Thursday I was home from work and back out again very quickly with my daughter to visit my mum.  This is a trip we make most Thursdays and is always good.  It was getting late when we got home so I had a quick QSO with HA8RM, Peter in Hungary.  I hear Peter a lot but I’ve never worked him before because he’s always calling CQ DX, however I wound my power down to 10w and asked if he’d mind working a European station running QRP.  Peter was happy to do this and we had a brief chat, no wonder he’s always very strong, he runs 1,500 watts!

Day #14 was good – No Spaniards, Italians or Russians for me today 🙂 I worked G4LOE, Gary in Solihull on 80m and then had a nice chat with G1MYE/M who was on the beach at Weston-Super-Mare on 40m.  A company I used to work for had an office in Weston and I used to go there fairly often on training courses.  I ended the day talking to Ed, LX1EA in Luxembourg on 40m.

Day #15 was very good indeed.  I worked two Italians on 20m, one of them being I2AE who was running a special event station for Castles and then I had a tune around on 10m to hear HZ1SK, Samir in Saudi Arabia.  It took a couple of calls but I worked him to get a new country in the log.   In the afternoon it was the 80m AFS contest so I had a go in that and added another 78 contacts to my logbook.

I knew that day #16 was going to be tricky as I had a wedding to go to and wasn’t expecting to have much time on the radio.  Luckily for me I was still up after midnight from day #15 and so had a couple of quick QSOs on 80m, PA0MIR and HA3OV.  Both were just giving them points in a contest but hey, they’re still contacts.

3 Comments

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  1. Nice work. You are doing well. I myself need to make time to operate on the bands, and I like your incentive.

    I have question about your station, I am always curious to know what sorts of antenna’s other radio amateurs are using or have to use, and what sort of restrictions, if any.

    73 Andre’

  2. Currently my antenna for HF (3.5MHz to 24MHz) is a long wire fed through an SGC Smarttuner and a 5/8 vertical for 28MHz. The wire isn’t great and I’m going to replace it as soon as I can. The radio is an FT-847.

    73
    Keith.

  3. Thanks Keith.
    I have a small QTH, and I am currently using a home made inverted L with trap for 80/40 and with 28+ buried radials (I got bored / tired laying them!) I have also a 65 ft wire with 9:1 unun which is down at the moment. I have tried other antennas, but I need to be semi-stealthy were I am. The best DX I have worked was using a G7FEK (broken) and the 65ft wire and unun …

    See you on the bands …

    73
    Andre’

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