Last week I got two new ones confirmed on LoTW. The first was YS4U (#242 LoTW) who I worked on 20M CW and the second one was EA6IB (#243 LoTW) on 40M CW, both in CQWW CW.
I have had a few days off from work and have had some time to play with radio. Conditions on 30M and 40M are quite good at this time of the year, and the sun sets around 14z at my qth. I can easily take advantage of the grayline propagation to Japan and the US west coast now. I've been mostly on 30M working a lot of stations from the US and also several stations from Japan. I was answered by YB1RGK Bernd on 30M CW one day for a new one (#259 30M). One day I even got a pile up from EU, not really sure why though. LA shouldn't be that rare on 30M but maybe it has something to do with LoTW? I'm pretty quick to upload my latest log and the quickest confirmation for me so far has to be W8RIT only 16 minutes after our contact. Several of the stations on 30M and 40M has also been confirmed the same day. Today I worked ST2AR on 30M CW for a new one (#260 30M). He had a strong signal and it was the third band I got him on.
I am also trying to complete my LoTW WAS. I have 45 states mixed and the ones missing are Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, North Dakota and Wyoming. I worked Mississippi today, and he is listed as a LoTW user, so hopefully only 4 will be missing soon. One day I'll complete all 50 for sure.
Take a look at this video. Quite an amazing signal for eme. This video reminds me of LA8AV Egil's 23CM setup. I visited him once during an eme contest in 2006. I remember he worked LX1DB on CW and then LX1DB asked Egil to go on SSB too. Signals were amazing, but no wonder when LX1DB runs a 10M dish. I added pictures of Egil's old eme setup under photoalbums. Click here to take a look.
This is how my 6M yagi looked like a few days ago. Because of the snow and ice, I couldn't run at all on 6M. The swr was just too high. Luckily everyhing was ok again when the weather warmed up and everything melted.
4L0A on 40M SSB was #240 on LoTW. 9L7NS on 20M CW was a nice surprise. I worked Ned a few days before CQWW. I did see 9M2CNC spotted on 40M during CQWW, but I never got him. I wasn't on when he was on. However I got 9M2CNC on 30M CW November 30th. He gave me #241 on LoTW. I also worked 5R8IC on 40M CW on November 30th. That was #246 on 40M.
On November 26th, I was listening around on 30M, but I didn't hear too much activity. It was right around my sunset here, so I thought I would give a few cq calls. The first station to answer my call was W1IMA Bob in MA. Right after that, R1ANB Nick from the Mirny base down in Antarctica called in. Nick had quite a nice signal here, but he was struggling with my signal. He had some qrm because of high winds. I checked his call on qrz.com, and found the beautiful qslcard you can see above. It's not every day I work Antarctica. The log shows 22 qso'es over the years.
Last week I got two new ones confirmed on LoTW. The first was YS4U (#242 LoTW) who I worked on 20M CW and the second one was EA6IB (#243 LoTW) on 40M CW, both in CQWW CW.
