Dave wrote:
On Saturday morning I was getting a lovely 559 copy from Ossi OE5ODL but he
took such a long time getting Steve's callsign right ( that's a-l-G! ) that
he faded down before I called.
I'm very sorry that you missed Ossi. At the start of the QSO with
OE5ODL, I sent 449, and received 229. Although Ossi confirmed receipt
of his 449 report, I then realised that he was sending my call as
'GW4AL'. I lost count of the number of times that I sent 'GW4ALG', or
just 'ALG'. I began thinking that this was going to be one that got
away. But then Ossi started sending
the correct suffix! . . . and signals had improved to 559/449. We
had done it! And over a very difficult path of 1219 km too! (Country
number 14, all on normal speed CW.)
Of course, the 136 kHz band was quite busy, and I was also getting
bursts of local electrical noise. This QSO would not have been possible
without my newly constructed 40 Hz audio filter, as designed by PA0LQ.
Whenever I switched the filter out, Ossi's signal simply disappeared
into the noise.
PA0LQ heard in Rybinsk
**********************
In a recent letter from Harry, he writes ". . . last month I got a QSL
card from a Russian listener (UA3-158-382) located in Rybinsk. He
reported my 136 kHz signal RST 569 on 20 March 1999 while I had a QSO
with DJ5BV . . . Rybinsk is about 250 km NNE from Moscow, thus giving a
distance of over 2200 km to my QTH."
We can only imagine the other successes that Harry would have had on 136
kHz, had it not been for the antenna restrictions which resulted in him
going QRT.
Regards to all,
Steve GW4ALG
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