I woke up early this morning, about an hour and a half before sunrise and it occurred to me that if I were to switch the wireless on, I might get some greyline propagation. Sunrise was at 06:03 and first light at 04:44.
I got up and fired up 30m FT8 which was pretty dead, just two stations calling CQ and not working anyone.
I watched for a while while I had a drink and then after a few minutes I made a couple of CQ calls myself using WSJT-X with no replies. I looked at pskreporter to see where I’d been heard and there were a couple of spots in both VK and ZL land.
I called CQ for a while with no replies and so I went back to monitoring, I did see two CQ calls from a 9Y station but nothing more from him.
Eventually, all of a sudden ZL4AS appeared and JT-Bridge pinged at me because I have it set to alert me to new band slots.
Just over a minute later, the QSO was complete.
That’s a new slot on 30m and when I checked my log, it’s been exactly six years and one day since I last worked ZL. Cliff (ZL4AS) has already uploaded to LoTW so it’s been confirmed.
