[Elecraft] Most rewarding/Craziest QSO

[eric norris]

In 2014 I was on a kayaking trip in the Johnstone Strait/Queen Charlotte Strait off Vancouver Island.  I brought my KX3 along, and one evening I had a few spare minutes while camped near the Sophie Islands.  I threw my wire up in a very wet tree, and laid out a counterpoise on wet, thick underbrush.  I didn't have a chance.
I tuned around a bit on 40 CW, and to my astonishment heard a guy also camping out on a lake in Arizona, having a QSO with another station.  When they were done I called him, signing WD6DBM/VE7.  He kept calling QRZ QRZ, but eventually we made it.  What a thrill!  Wire in a tree to wire in a tree!
Later that night I fell asleep to the sounds of a sleeping Northern Resident Orca pod in a cove a few hundred feet away from me (5 adults, 2 calves from their breathing patterns), and the noise of a cruise ship 5 miles away whose engines I could hear coming through my sleeping platform.
73 Eric WD6DBM

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android