Hello Kuwait
After living here in the new house since January, I haven’t had a lot of chances to use the radios, even though I now have a room for my hobby (shared, of course with KD2CHE’s sewing). The shack has been piled with things to sort through, requiring some digging and re-arranging to get to the Atlas 210X. A few days ago, I finally went through the pile and did some major organizing. I now have a nice work surface, and all of the radios set up and working (including a recent flea-market find, a snazzy FRG-7). Tonight after tuning around on 20 meters I answered a couple of calls. The second call was from 9K2UU in Kuwait. This contact is now my second-best distance since I got my license (about 6800 miles), and the best from home (the no 1 was Namibia from my 10 meter mobile here at the beach). Barrak gave me a 5-7, and he got a 5-9 from me. All of this with an old Atlas 210X, and a 35 foot end-fed sloper into a 9:1 UnUn. I’m happy with that.
Good morning Neil, very nice contact and nice to read it was done with your Atlas rig. Most of the time one would expect Kuwait not to be calling you but planted on a freq looking at a pileup.
Mike
I like to take a look at the higher bands at night (20, 15, and even 10). You never know. And, if you hear someone they’re usually the product of some interesting propagation. The trick is to spin the dial a lot and catch them when they first appear. Got someone from Moscow the night before on 20, and you’ll sometimes hear the South Pacific on 15 or 10 (have yet to catch one).