LA8AJA's homepage

Here is a short presentation of Bjorn LB1GB. He started his ham career at the age of 14. One of his big interests is contesting, and he is one of the founders and operators of LA8W. Bjorn has lately put down much work with the Norwegian SOTA program. The Norwegian program was launched May 1st 2008 and it can be found at http://sota.no. Bjorn is the "Association Manager Norge" for the Norwegian part of SOTA. SOTA is short for Summits On The Air. A program I had never heard about until Bjorn started talking about it.

As he commented in my guestbook, he got inspired to update his own homepage after I did a very much needed update myself. Check out his page here: http://www.radiosporting.net/lb1gb/. Bjorn is also the webmaster for several other hamradio related sites: http://la8w.com, http://contesting.no, http://sota.no and http://wrtc.info/.

I finally managed to work VK9DWX Willis Island yesterday. They had a great signal on 40M, and I managed to make recordings of my own QSO and a few minutes of totally chaos on the frequency. Listen to the three soundclips below. In case you haven’t been following DX-bulletins, Willis Island is activated by a big team during October 2008. More details on the homepage.

9L1X was worked on 30M on Sunday for a new band country. I did have a go at 40M, but couldn’t break the pile-up. Guess many people need 9L.

Here are the soundclips I recorded from VK9DWX on 40M October 14th 2008:

• LA8AJA working VK9DWX on 40M 35s 34KB
• VK9DWX – chaos on 40M 2m27s 144KB
• VK9DWX on 40M 3m06s 182KB

LoTW brought more confirmations. NH7O 40M CW, thanks Al. P49X and HC8N on 40M RTTY, thanks.

Yesterday we had some aurora up here in Northern Europe. I don’t recall when I last worked aurora, but it was probably some time last year. Since I have most of the square around me worked, I don’t bother that much for aurora, but I noticed Per LA7DFA had been on 6M. I still need JP33, so I turned the yagi and gave a few calls. I worked OH4EA, DJ9YE, OH3MF, SM4IVE, ES1CW, SM4DHF, SM4ARQ, SM1TDE and LA8NK. Nothing new, but it was fun to have a go again. Nothing from JP33 though, but that one will sooner or later get in my log.

No DX in the log down on HF, but did hear VK9DWX  (Willis) and 9L1X on 40M. I tried a few calls, but the pile-up were too big. I’ll give it a go later this week when propagation pics up. Aurora does tend to give us bad propagation for a while.

The official website for the 2009 KP5 DXPedition has been launched. KP5 is currently the 7th most-needed DXCC entity, worldwide! Here you go: http://www.kp5.us/startup.htm

Since I had some time before work today, I checked the cluster. KH7XS was spotted on 40M SSB. I did work him on CW a few weeks ago with a great signal. I tuned in on 40M and there he was with a great signal today again. I gave a few calls and he was in the log very quickly. ZL2SQ was spotted down in the CW band with a nice signal and pile-up. I gave a few calls, but no way I could get through that mess. If he had gone split, he would have worked many more. I decided to go up in the band and give a few CQ’s. VK3XU Drew answered my first call. He gave me my last zone on 40M and a new country on CW. Thanks Drew. KI6LZ George from California called in after Drew. I tried a few more CQ’s, but no reply. An hour later, FO/DJ7RJ popped up on 40M. I was kinda hoping he would show somewhere I had a chance to work him. He was about 559 with some flutter, quite a nice signal when you think about the signal travelling all the way from the Pacific. Several LA’s got through before I managed to work him for a new country. I have the other FO’s, but Marquesas Island was blank in my log. Finally a new country. I can’t say I remember the last time a new country was logged. That was number 319.