Journal
What A Week for DX Here
Apr 28, 2019
It's a sunspot minimum? Could have fooled me. I've been raking in DX like I hadn't since I got my General in the late 90's. Back then (damn I sound old now) I could spin the dial on my Realistic HTX-100 10m rig and work worldwide. I missed out on the last solar peak and assumed I'd have to be content with stateside contacts for a few years. Boy was I wrong.
This week started out with Israel (a new one) followed by Kuwait (another new one). I got home from the office Friday and flipped the rig on for background noise, only to hear LZ116RF booming in on 20m. Later that evening I managed to work France and Hungary on 40m.
The next day I worked special event stations AM70L and AM70C, KM0RSE (technically not DX, but still cool), and stations in France, Cuba, Hungary, and Bulgaria.
This morning I worked Igor, R5WW on 20 meters. He was LOUD. Like, guy down the street loud. I called him a couple times with my 50 watts and he came right back! We had a brief exchange and I thanked him for the QSO. Had I not wanted to "hog" him, we probably could have had a 30 minute conversation otherwise however.
Fun times! All of that with 50 watts to a 500' loop at 20 feet. Very cool.