I didn’t make many contacts today, but I had a great time.
First off, I had planned to put PL-259s on the feedlines for the dipole and the VHF antenna, but when I went to do so, I found that it had already been done! That was very cool.
Next, I hooked up the Icom IC-V8000 to see what repeaters we could hit. First, I tried keying up the ARROW repeater. Nothing. Hmmmmm, I thought, maybe it’s just down. Next, I tried the U-M repeater, which is less than a mile away as the crow flies. I was able to key it, but the S-meter showed only a couple of S units. Something was wrong.
I swapped feedlines, and voila! Everything worked as I’d hoped. Somehow, we’d mis-labelled the feedlines. Not only that, there’s still nothing connected to the end of the dipole feedline, so I was actually able to key up the U-M repeater without an antenna!
Anyway, after connecting the right feedline to the radio, I chatted a bit with both Ralph, AA8RK, and Pat, W8LNO. Talking to Pat was fortuitous because he’s involved with Scouting, and when I mentioned that we planned to operate the Jamboree on the Air next weekend, he volunteered to come down and help out. That means we will be able to operate two radios, the HF station on 20m and the VHF station through the U-M repeater to EchoLink.
After that conversation, I turned the HF rig back on, and thought I’d see what was on 15 m. Tuning around, I found a small pileup on 21.017. I called up DXWatch and determined that the pileup was for T32C, the DXpedition to Chrismas Island. I accessed their record on QRZ.Com, found the bearing, swung the beam around to 260 degrees, and heard them quite well. After setting the transmit incremental tuning to about 2 kHz, I worked them on the second call! I just love that beam!
Great work all around! Over last weekend I heard T32C at about that same frequency almost around the clock – and I could hear the stations they were working, too: Japan, central Russia, Scandinavia, and the US all at the same time – amazing. The pileups were often HUGE and impenetrable to my small in-town station, but I caught them in the early morning calling CQ with nobody there at all and got them on the first call with my 5 watts and wires in the trees – what a thrill! Glad to hear you got them in the WA2HOM log, too.
We got them again this Saturday on 10m. After working the JOTA, Mark, W8MP, suggested that we try to work them on another band. We called up their website, and found that they were on 10m. We swung the beam around and worked them within 5 minutes.