[FARC] Olivia 1st DX

[M and J Gillespie]

Kirk,

Congrats on the DX.  

The bands are certainly not good these days.  I am just waiting for the sunspots to return.  This week end is the ARRL DX CW contest.  Yesterday and today I got on and tried to find some "Hot" DX.  Most of the stuff was on 20 meters and from western Europe although I did work  about a half dozen Caribbean stations.  All in all  I got about  30 contacts in about an hours work. This morning I limited my power to ten watts and was able to get about 3 out of 4 of the stations I called with the first call. The "big powers" in the DX world would hoot at anyone running ten watts in a contest saying it only creates unnecessary QRM to the serious hams. All contacts gave me a 599 report! Wow! How about that?  Those reports are always 599 and many DX stations print QSL cards with the report 599 right on the card.  In other words, the signal reports don't mean a durn thing. The important thing is to give and receive the needed info.  In my case that was "599 MD".

The QSL bureau is slow and often you do not get the cards you want.  Nonetheless, they are nice.  You need to send some (2 or 3) self addressed stamped envelopes to the qsl bureau. I should send some envelopes to them myself...haven't done so in about three years.  For very rare stations I send the QSL card and self addressed envelope to them directly to their QRZ.com address or to their designated QSL manager and enclose one or two "green stamps"  (U. S. dollar bills.)  For the first 100 countries that can be very expensive and it is far better to go through the Bureaus even if it takes more time.

My set up is not very pretentious but I would love to show you my ham station some evening.

Best of 73s
Jim Gillespie, K3DQ


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kirk Talbott 
  To: FARC 
  Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 11:42 AM
  Subject: [FARC] Olivia 1st DX


  Just worked, sort of, my first DX station with Olivia on 20 meters, 14.107.50.  HB9TPL Daniel, in Evolene, a small village in Switzerland on the Italian border.  We exchanged names, QTH's, grids, station equipment, and signal reports and then the band just closed, bummer.  HB9TPL is on QRZ.com for info.  

  Him using 80 watts and a simple dipole hanging from two trees and me using 55 watts and a 20 meter, 20 ft., shortened dipole sloping from a TV tower to the ground.  

  73
  kb3onm
  kirk




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