GW4VXE's Station Diary

Nice to have an email from Mike AD5A about yesterday's SOTA QSO on 12m;

'I was running my KX2 @ 8 watts to a tuned piece of 29ft. wire on a 6m pole mounted in an inverted L configuration. This was my 641st activation. I haven't been very active the last year but plan to pick up the speed this year'.

Pretty amazing to think that a simple setup like that can communicate over such long distances. In some ways, I think there's more satisfaction for me in a QSO like that than with Bouvet! Not that I want to give away my 3Y0K QSOs.....

A bit windy when we got back from Welsh, so I've taken down the DX Commander Signature 9 and put up my home-brew DX Commander lookalike which is a bit shorter and whips around less alarmingly in the high winds.

Some decent signals from J51A on 50MHz this afternoon, except that unfortunately, I wasn't paying attention and trying to hear a US SOTA station on HF.

Good to catch Red TY5FR again, this time on 15m. Failed to work VP2EAD on 20m CW - he had a good signal but I gave up trying to crack what seemed quite a busy pileup. Some nice QSOs mostly on 14 and 18MHz in the evening, furthest was with Steve KW7Q in Colorado.