Days 112, 113 and 114 – getting ready to use GR6NHU

I’ve had three nicely busy days on the wireless and I’ve been getting things ready for the special callsign for the Royal Wedding later on this week.  The NoV for GR6NHU has arrived, I’ve added it to my qrz.com profile, set up a QSL card design on eQSL.cc and requested a certificate on LoTW.  I’ve also added the callsign to my clublog.org account.

On day #112 I had two early morning QSOs on 15m with UR4MHI, Andrey and UX1LU, Igor.  Later in the day I had a chat with Mike, EA8EQ on Tenerife on the same band.  Much later in the evening I worked a string of stations in the USA and one Canadian using JT65 on 20m: N4AOL, Carlton in Virginia, KD8LCD, Richard in Ohio, VE3CGR Ron in Canada, N9KCQ, Steve in Michigan and K5WBM, Bruce in Mississippi.

On day #113 I started on the radio early again and talked to RW9WT, Alex on 15m followed by a contact with TK4DS on 20m.  Tonny is in Corsica which is a new DXCC for me, the first one in April.  Later in the afternoon I worked LU4AHR, Hector on 10m and then managed to get through the pileup to work 9K2UU, Barrak in Kuwait on 15m.  Around tea time I worked three Swiss stations on 40m in their contest: HB9VD, HB9W and HB9CA.   A bit later on after a real struggle and a couple of band changes I had a QSO with my brother, Terry, G4GHU on 80m for our first ever HF contact.  We’ve worked on VHF many times so it was good to have a quick chat on HF.  Terry has just put up an aerial and dug his old Drake TR7 out of the box for the first time in many years.

Once again I had a string of QSOs on 20m JT65 before going to bed, I worked KU4FO, Carl in Virginia, K1PL, Paul in Connecticut, KA9NFE, Ron in Illinois, KB1SUA, Michael in Massachusetts and K1QN, Albert in Rhode Island.

Day #114 started off with a 30m QSO just after 00:00 with W5KF, Sam in Maine before I turned in for the night.  I’d heard reports that around 07:00 the previous day that 20m had been nicely open to VK and I suppose that was subconsciously in my mind because I was up early in the morning.  I had a tune around 20m but didn’t hear any great DX.  I called CQ using JT65 a couple of times and had three QSOs in quick succession with VK3GY, Nigel, not too far from Melbourne in southern Australia, YU7WL, Slav and N6RSX, Craig in California.  It was really nice to work VK again and it shows how effective JT65 is.  I then went back to bed because it was still early in the morning and I’d not had much sleep!

In the afternoon I heard a big pileup trying to work EA3GTJ, Tita on 20m.  I got quite lucky because she mentioned that she was going to go split operation and once she did that I worked her on my second call.  It took a while for the pileup to realise what she’d done and so it was handy that I was on the ball.  Later in the evening I worked K3MRK, Mark in Pennsylvania on 15m followed by 9A8W and YO2LOJ on 20m.  I then had a JT65 contact with Paul, M0TZO on 80m which he recorded and you can view on youtube by clicking here.  After that I finished off the night by having two futher JT65 QSOs on 20m again, K8CQ, Jeff in Georgia and KB3MOW, David in Pennsylvania.

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  1. Got my NoV too! I’m hoping it’ll be a QSO magnet.

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