[Lowfer] LF: JA/VE7 QSO Completed - FINALLY!

[Andy - KU4XR]

Congratulations Scott; definitely a feeling of accomplishment for you,
and a milestone at that. Relish the moment, until the next one !!

73, and good day:

Andy - KU4XR - EM75xr - Friendsville, TN. USA


--- On Tue, 9/28/10, Scott Tilley <sthed475 at telus.net> wrote:

> From: Scott Tilley <sthed475 at telus.net>
> Subject: LF: JA/VE7 QSO Completed - FINALLY!
> To: rsgb_lf_group at blacksheep.org, "Discussion of the Lowfer (US, European, & UK) and MedFer bands" <lowfer at mailman.qth.net>
> Date: Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 9:36 AM
>  Finally!  After months of
> trying, our gear, conditions and most of all our XYL's
> patience all worked together to produce a QSO!
> 
> JA7NI (DFCW30) and VE7TIL (DFCW60) completed a
> trans-pacific QSO on 2200m this morning a first between
> Canada and Japan.  CN89dk to QM09fl is 7162km.
> 
> Things started off with a surprise as NI copied TIL's
> beacon signal 30min before his sunrise.  What followed
> was a 'quick' exchange of calls and NI's report was received
> by TIL.  Then a very long and deep fade occurred. 
> This happened before to us and we lost each other and an
> entire nights sleep...!  But that taught us a lesson
> and we adapted to the deep fading on this path by creating a
> master slave relationship between the stations and using QSK
> to full effect.  Master slave means the station that is
> expecting a reply simply waits until he hears it while the
> other station transmits until heard with pauses (QSK) to
> listen...   NI waited patiently not knowing
> TIL had copied the calls and his report.  Our procedure
> was for him to simply wait until he copied
> something...  Three hours later RO appeared on NI's
> screen and during one of my crawls out of the bunk I saw a
> dot during a pause in transmission and stopped the
> transmitter.  A few minutes later there was an R and TU
> but not in DFCW but rather QRSS as a malfunction at NI's end
> had him scrambling, but he recovered with grace and the QSO
> was in the bag...
> 
> This QSO caps off months of work by both operators in
> improving their stations and beaconing on the path to learn
> its characteristics to make a QSO possible.  What is
> clear to me is the trans-pacific path on 2200m is a very
> viable communication path for amateur experimentation. 
> I'm sure time will demonstrate this further as procedures
> and equipment improve on both sides of the ocean.
> 
> I would like to particularly thank Yas, JA8SCD (the Tokyo
> Grabber) for his help and translation services. 
> Without him this would have been much more difficult.
> 
> More details including station equipment to follow in the
> next few days as I get caught up on my sleep and family life
> :-)
> 
> 73 Scott
> VE7TIL CN89dk
> http://www3.telus.net/sthed/argo/
> 
> 
>