Days 136, 137 and 138 – 40m ragchews

I’ve had three days where the majority of my operating has been on 40m SSB and almost all the QSOs I’ve had have been good proper chats.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the quick fire operating style where one just works station after station in quick succession but it’s always nice to slow things down and actually talk to people for more than just a couple of seconds and that’s what I’ve been doing this week.

On day #136 all QSOs except the last one were on 40m – I worked DG5BKM, Marco who’s located on a farm near Hamburg followed by MX0NCC/P, Gary who was on holiday in Great Yarmouth.  After that I had a chat with PD4RM, Hans in Zevenaar in the Netherlands and then directly after working Hans I was called by G3LWM, Jeff.  I’ve known Jeff for many years as he used to live near me and it turns out that he’s moved down to Somerset. It was a real surprise to be called by him and we had a quick chat.  After that I spoke to MW0MAU, Mark who is 10m north of Cardiff.

To finish off day #136 I switched over to 80m specifically to try and work G5FZ who were scheduled to be operating on 3,617kHz to commemorate Guy Gibson and 617 SQD RAF taking off from RAF Scampton (two miles east of their shack) to bomb the Ruhr dams with Barnes Wallace’s bouncing bomb.  I have to admit to some concerns about this commemoration and that some people may consider it to be in bad taste but a read of their website here soon made me agree with them and think otherwise.  This period of operation attracted a lot of attention and when they finally appeared, somewhat later than their scheduled starting time of 21:39, there was a huge pileup.  The operator did a good job of handling it and first worked his way through the numbers before opening up for anyone to call.  Within an hour or so the pileup had diminished and not only did I work them using the callsign of the Martello Tower Group but they were also worked using my son’s callsign of M6DHU with his limited power of just 10 watts.

After work on day #137 I had a tune around the higher bands and exchanged a quick 5-9 report with Vlad, 6W/RK4FF in Senegal on 15m before changing back to 40m and working EA1XF, Carlos in Gijon, northern Spain, OS4S, Wim in Gent and MX0HFC, Bob at the Humber Fortress club.

To finish off these three days, on day #138 I first worked M3HJH, Harry in Hyde near Manchester, M3ZXX, Kel in Ironbridge and finally GI7FHU, Ian in Gilford, Northern Ireland, all on 40m again.

A few days ago I mentioned my logbook in this blog.  I was really quite surprised by one of the stations I worked in the last three days who told me that he’d not made a note of my callsign as he doesn’t keep a logbook and he only used my callsign the once when he replied to me.  Now I know that it’s not a legal requirement in the UK (and other countries) to keep a log but this did make me feel a little sad that this station wasn’t keeping any record at all of who he spoke to and will have nothing to refer back to in the future.  I know I won’t be sending him a QSL card as if he has no record of the contact, he certainly can’t confirm it!

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