Not much contesting this weekend for me as I wasn’t going to be around much. I did make some contacts on 40m in the Maryland QSO Party on Sat.
On Sat I worked FR5MV (Ray) on Reunion Island off the eastern coast of Madagascar. That was a new DXCC entity, which is already confirmed via LoTW. That was great!
On Sat morning I heard a Hong Kong station on 17m. I haven’t worked a station in Hong Kong on any band and barely hear them even when I see them spotted on the cluster. The operator was Kazu VR2KF. He was strong on just my G5RV though with a warble. There were a lot of stations calling and since it wasn’t a great copy for me, I emailed him. Kazu responded back immediately and we tried a couple of times but I wasn’t able to work him – all on my end with the G5RV.
Kazu told me he’ll be on again Sun morning so after I got up I checked my email and he said he was on but not hearing the US yet. Then he emailed me that he’s hearing the US. I got on the radio and there he was, stronger then yesterday AND he was calling for K2DSL! I put out my call a couple of times, he heard me and we had a short exchange. I copied a 339 from him as well as my name and he got a 559 from me. At times he was 599 but then would drop down. At 1152z I had Hong Kong in the log!
I continued to listen to Kazu for another 20 mins. He got even a bit stronger with less up and down. I emailed Kazu to thank him for such a terrific effort on his part. What a fine op!
Good DX,
K2DSL
17m has been amazing lately and those are both good catches, particularly Honk Kong. In all the years I lived in 2-Land, I never heard HK once…that part of the world is tough from there.