Day 6 – 10m SSB open to Europe for 3rd day in a row – but 20m long path to W/VE closed

Today saw a lot more QSO’s than I expected. Despite it being a working day in Japan, 15m SSB provided a lot of action to JA with the odd European QSO thrown in during 0530-0700 UTC. Then I jumped onto to 10m SSB, I wasn’t expecting much, the solar figures were good but not as great as two days ago when 10m was fantastic to Europe, the second day was ok but not spectacular. To my surprise there were lots of signals from Europe and I stayed here from 0730-0900 UTC. At 0930 UTC we were going out to dinner, remember my VERY VERY tolerant XYL Michelle is with me in this supposed ‘holiday style’operation. So I jumped on 40m SSB for 15 minutes after spotting myself on the cluster. I did work W7IV which was great but that was it, along with a few JA’s. After an exotic tropical dinner washed down with a few ales I jumped on 40m SSB at 1100 UTC and 40m PSK31 at 1130 UTC, and despite using the cluster to spot it, the only DX logged was a small bunch of JA, nothing from W/VE.

At 1200 UTC I jumped on 20m SSB, I figured I wouldn’t be that busy as the demand for Europe on 14 MHz phone would have been satisfied after what has been the majority of my QSO’s thus far. Yeah OK I was wrong about that, the pile ups at times were quiet it was still mostly pretty fast and furious and I didn’t get up from my chair once during the 1200-1700 UTC period (10pm-3am local). I knew I had to do my usual check of 20m long path to the America’s later , so it was a 1930 UTC wake up call for just 2.5 hours sleep...... for the fourth day in a row – when I do the maths it works out that I’ve been going on 4-5 hours of sleep per day all week – hmmm, tired!!!!

I woke up and worked KL7CWN at 1953 on PSK31 20m. Unfortunately 20m long path to North America was a bust. I even couldn’t find anyone to contact on the 20m PSK31 window, then all of a sudden in between the VK’s, JA’s and UA’s I noticed a faint trace. After many calls I finally got him in the log at 2206 UTC, it was J73WA for an all time new DXCC country!!! At least that counterbalanced the disappointment of not being able to give anyone else OC-172 in W/VE.

I have one more day to operate. So again around 0600 UTC I’ll be on 15m SSB/PSK31, around 0700 UTC on 10m SSB, in between checking 0900-1200 UTC I’ll do the odd spot on 40m PSK31/SSB. Around 1100 UTC I’ll be on 20m SSB until the band dies. The plan was to then goto bed at 1700 UTC and pack up the station in the morning from 2000 UTC as we need to be checked out of our cabin by 0000 UTC.

But I’ve convinced Michelle that I can pack up the station and antenna’s etc in a shorter period of time, so I’ll sneak in a 2000-2100 UTC session on 20m SSB for the last chance to try America’s on 20m. So check the cluster in this period and maybe the DX gods will smile.

Yesterday saw a very productive 529 QSO’s in the log to bring up the total after 6 days to 3401 QSO’s. So if you’re not in the log, hopefully I can get you over the next 15 hours.