[ADXA] VP6D had great ops

[Jay Bromley]

Now for a lighter note.  

 

Two nights before Ducie went off the air, my wife Kathy comes into the shack
asking what I was up to?  My reply was---- something I shouldn't be doing.
I had worked VP6D on all the upper bands I had an antenna for, but I didn't
have any low band antennas up in the air after getting the beam up.  I had
VP6DX on 160m CW years ago, but I didn't have them on 30-80 meters.  So I
got to looking at my tuner in an evil mad scientist sort of way and
proceeded to load it into the shield of my coax going up to the beam.  That
right the shield of my coax plus all the losses from the tuner.  So with my
mighty 100 watts I proceeded on 30m CW calling and calling.  Even with
preamp 2 turned on the 7600, they were not moving my S meter, but I could
hear them plain as day with my headset.  I am sure they were running power,
but I wasn't about to try loading my amp into that setup.  So I call and
called.  A few times they called CQ and you could tell they were hearing
some noise being modulated by CW, hi.  I could imagine seeing the operator,
pushing against the headset closer to him with his head down, saying to
himself who is that weak signal that doesn't give up.  My thoughts were
---God let me be loud enough for them to get my call.  BTW, I never turned
the VFO, left on the spotted frequency.  It took over an hour and I like to
feel over when they called me.  I got the TU and I was off to 40m on cloud
nine!  

 

I heard the 40m CW pileup and went to FT8 on 40m instead of trying CW.  I
got them on FT8 on 40m with just a few calls.  So then I went on 80m trying
them on FT8.  That was just asking too much of the shield antenna I guess,
but I quit feeling great heading for bed.  Not so much about my FT8 contact
on 40m as I seen prints on that mode into a dummy load before, but CW on 30m
with that setup was super cool I still can't get over it.  Something I will
always remember.  The next night in the dark I put up a wire I had laying
around and told Kathy it only has to stay up a night or two.  I sort of
fashion it as a 160m inverted L with one elevated radial.  It looked and
still looks horrible.  However I worked them again on 30m FT8 and RTTY.
Then 40m CW and then moved up to 160m, as they were not on 80m yet.  So even
though I didn't need them on 160m I thought what the heck.  While checking
80m on CW and FT8 frequencies I screwed up when I went back to 160m.  I left
the split off, I bet no one has done that one before!  Some knuckle head
came back to me W5JAY 5NN, like I couldn't tell the real thing from a pirate
down under his signal.  Anyway I noticed my screwup and corrected it.  Every
time I called they would fade out, so I just quit and listened for a while.
At 0405 UTC I got them on 80m CW and 14 minutes later I went back to 160m to
get them there just for fun.  I left the rig on 80m FT8 thinking they would
be on around later.  I missed them by a few hours, but I was checking every
few hours I got up from bed.

 

VP8D wasn't ATNO, but sure was fun chasing DX with friends, helping some
along the way with computer and logging issues.  The VP6 ops were super ops
IMHO.

 

73 de w5jay/jay..

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