During the 2010 WAE RTTY contest I saw a spot for 8J1RL which is the Japanese research amateur radio station in Antarctica. I took a moment to tune to SSB and the station was booming in with a true S9 on my TS-2000, much louder then the US station KC4AAA which I previously made contact with on phone. I listened for a couple mins and he worked stations and then identified himself as 8J1RL. I had a feeling since he was ending the contacts with sayonara, but I wanted to be sure so I waited for him to id. I had the headphones out and my wife was listening too. I put out K2DSL and on the first call he came back with K2 so I put it out there again and he came back with K2DSL and gave me a nice 58.
The QRZ detail page lists a different grid locator then listed on the main page which is KC90tx. You can see their location by going to http://levinecentral.com/ham/grid_square.php?Grid=KC90tx and zooming out a little.
KC4AAA was also listed on the cluster and active at the same time and when I tuned to his frequency he was much weaker then 8J1RL. I’ve now worked 4 different Antarctica stations:
KC4AAA – 20m phone – US station
DP1POL – 40m RTTY – German station
R1ANP – 40m RTTY – Russian station
8J1RL – 20m phone – Japanese station
73 & good DX,
K2DSL
Hope you are feeling better Dave, that is a very cool contact for sure. What a surprise that must had been to put your call out there and have them come back to you.
Just worked both KC4AAA and 8J1RL last eve, Fri Dec 09, 2010 at 2345 hours local from Southwick MA.
I finished installing a temp 250 ft vee 45ft sloping
and was seeing if it would tune all bands. 20 SSB was quiet except for two freq. spots and both from Antartica. QSO was solid copy 10 minutes each site. I was running only 50 watts.
I happen to live three houses away from the late MD Dr. Jerri Neilson who was on Amundsen-Scott Base and emergency flown out in Oct.couple of years ago. The event was broadcast on the Weather Channel several times.
K1II Charlie/ Trustee WC1SW