XPost: rec.radio.amateur.moderated
Ham Radio Ireland - EI2KC
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My first QSO with Japan on 6 metres
Posted: 04 Jul 2021 05:19 AM PDT
http://hamradioireland.blogspot.com/2021/07/my-first-qso-with-japan-on-6-metres.html
Well it finally happened. After weeks of waiting, I managed to log two JA stations on 6 metres this morning. I got a message from Doug EI2CN saying
he was decoding and working Japan. Now Doug has a much more substantial
station than me, at a much higher elevation, just a few miles from here. He regularly sees and works stations that I cannot see/hear.
However, after waiting a little while I started to see decodes from Japan
on FT8. I put out a CQ JA, and after a few minutes I was called by JG2BRI.
He was at -15 and gave me a -18, but with heavy QSB on the band other EIs
were reporting that they were having difficulty completing QSOs.
I grabbed my smartphone and made a quick video. I hope you can forgive my excitement, but this was the moment of my first ever Japan QSO on 6m - one
I have waited 11 years for. I think the "yeeehaa" was justified!
A few moments later, I was also called by JH4UYB and managed to complete
with him too, with signal reports of -16 each way. After that the band
closed up pretty quickly here, but I did not mind as I had finally achieved
a QSO that I have been anticipating for years.
Needless to say I also worked two new squares with these JA QSOs - PM84 and PM86. Also, Japan becomes my 110th DXCC worked on 50 Mhz.
A screenshot of my first QSO with Japan on 6 metres.
A screenshot from PSKreporter.info showing some of my decodes in Japan.
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