Days 3,4 and 5

Day #3 started off well with a QSO just a few seconds into the day to R7DX (what a great callsign), Alex who is around 1,800 miles away in Russia.  I worked him on 40m and the band was wide open but I was very tired and went to bed straight after.   Later on that day I had another QSO on 17m to follow on from my first ever 17m contact the day before and 28MHz was open for a while on the same day so I also worked EA4EUI, Frank in Madrid and another Russian, Vitaly, RU9WR.  I did hear a station in Zimbabwe on 28MHz and although I called him, he was very weak and he wasn’t able to get my callsign.

On day #4 I had a very quick QSO on 40m before I went to work in the morning with Z36T, Al in Macedonia and then in the evening it was the first of the 144MHz UKAC contests in 2011 where I operated as G0PKT for the Martello Tower Group and had around 40 QSOs. Even though I wasn’t using my own callsign, I reckon these contest contacts count as valid QSOs towards the QSO365 project (not that they were needed today but it’s good to set the ground rules early on).

Day #5 was almost my downfall.  I’d hate to fail this early in the project but although I had a quick tune around the bands before I went to work, I was running a little late and so didn’t work anyone.  After work I went straight to Enfield where I met up with members of the Hadley Wood Contest Group and I didn’t get home until 23:40.  As soon as I got in, I fired up the wireless and managed to have a chat with IZ8TDP, Genny in Napoli on 40m.  This was cutting it really fine though and it’s not a situation I want to find myself in again.  In future, if there’s a chance that I won’t be home until late then I’ll try and either have a QSO before I leave for work or make sure I manage to talk to someone from the car on the drive to or from work.

3 Comments

Add a Comment
  1. I’ll follow the project with interest. If I can have 365 in my first year as an amateur I’ll be happy – only another 360 to go.

    M6OZI

  2. Will also watch with interest. I guess repeat qsos don’t count hi.
    Make sure you don’t catch the flu, don’t want your attempt scuppered in the first Month.
    Good luck and hope to be one of your qsos during 2011.

    73s Gary G4LOE

    1. Thanks for the comments, Scotty and Gary.

      I’m not ruling out duplicates but it will be sensible. If I happen to work the same station a couple of times during the year then that’s fine but it would be wrong of me to include twenty QSOs on 144MHz FM simplex with the same person as that really defeats the object.

      I hope to get a data interface sorted so that will give me the options of RTTY, PSK and even some MS during the year so I hope that finding people to work won’t be a problem.

      73
      Keith.

Leave a Reply to GaryCancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.