LF: 137 kHz 2E0ILY-N1BUG QSO complete

[N1BUG <paul@n1bug.com>]

Last night Chris 2E0ILY and myself completed a DFCW60 QSO over a
4731 km path on 137 kHz. To my knowledge this is the first USA to
Europe two way amateur radio QSO on the band. My sincere thanks to
Chris for his time and effort to make this happen!

I apologize if being in the WSPR band created problems for anyone. I
asked Chris to give up four nights (or more) of other activity to do
this. I did not want to additionally ask him to spend hours tuning
the antenna elsewhere and then back again.

Signals were at times outstanding with three hours of perfectly
solid copy here one night. While not quite that good in the other
direction, I am very pleased with the copy Chris had on me. We would
not be able to make it on any other QSO mode, but slow DFCW made it
possible!

This QSO was like an adventure. :-) The first night of transmitting
I had to constantly retune the antenna due to influence of very
heavy snow squalls. I'm glad I put a motor on the variometer.
Without it, transmitting that night would not have been possible.

73,
Paul N1BUG FN55mf