ZL9HR - 17700km !

Beautiful winter afternoon here in Tallinn. -3 degrees, 12cm of snow, nice sunshine.

Worked my #268 dxcc on 15m long path. Campbell isl , ZL9HR. 17700km. That's almost the most distant place (the most distant being Chatham isl, 17750km) one could go from Tallinn. Very nice..

First ever antenna for 10m - 3el yagi!

Well guys, now when the Sun is finally cooperating, it was about time to put something up for 10m. I have never had anything on that band. I borrowed a 3el yagi from my friend Gary, ES1WST.

Bolted it to an old TV antenna mast, with an 1.5m extension tube. There is no room for the rotator, as the elements would be stuck into 15m moxon guy wires. I fixed it towards Japan for now.

Welcome to 15m

It was a nice and windless day here in Tallinn today. I used the opportunity and replaced my 20m moxon antenna (which was a real workhorse for W6,W7 during the summer) with 15m band moxon. God it looks good from the ground.

By the end of the day I worked 91 W-s, 49 JA-s, 4 VK-s, 3 ZL-s.

The 15 moxon stays up at least until the end of April 2013.

I hope it will be my best JA band.

JCC milestone, 40%

Got a bureau card from JA9YYI, Uozu city, Toyama prefecture. It means that 40% of all possible JCC's are now confirmed with cards!

500 counties confirmed!

First milestone in my county hunting endeavor - 500 counties confirmed with paper qsls. Lucky 'winner' is Bob, W9EWZ from Rock county, WI.

6000-th station from US

Another great day - I worked my 6000th unique station from continental USA. Lucky 'winner' is Ernie, N6HY.

View all my USA station on google map

700 RDA-s confirmed

Got a card from RA9SGL/P which sets my RDA confirmation count to 700. First major target of 1000 is not very far..

Okinawa completes my WAJA

Went through my last batch of received cards and found a card from JR6DM, Sam from Okinawa.
That was my last missing prefecture. WAJA (worked all 47 districts of Japan) application is on it's way very soon!

Back to 20m for summer

Today I spent 5 hours on my roof taking down 12m moxon and putting back 20m moxon. It's rather daunting job to stand on a ladder 5meters above the roof. It requires extremely calm day with as low wind as possible.

So, my 12m moxon was up from October to mid April. It exceeded my expectations for sure. 12m band turned out to be my best JA band. Within a winter I worked 991 different stations from Japan. My heart is bleeding taking the antenna down without breaking the magical '1000 different JA-s' boundary.

I worked 1689 different US stations as well on 12m, though my best W band is still 17m.

So, all of you from W6, W7, KL7, KH6 - see you on 20m this summer!

30% of JCC-s confirmed

Found a direct card from Hiko-san JR1JAA in my mailbox today. Yamato city from Kanagawa prefecture is my  243-th confirmed JCC which means that 30% of all existing JCC-s are confirmed by qsl cards. Nice going ;)

250-th worked, thank you Laos!

Thursday morning. Minutes before local sunrise. -20.7C/-5F degrees outside. Brrr..

Just before running to work I heard a lonely "CQ CQ de XW3DT" on 12m cw. Rather weak. 559. One answer - and a new one is logged. 250-th. Time to celebrate. I think I'm gonna grab a beer on my way home later today ;)

My first winter aurora.

Mid January. Nice snowy Sunday here in Tallinn. I managed to work 2 new countries despite of a poor propagation on 12m. PJ4C from Bonaire and HK0NA from Malpelo isl. My total count jumped to 249. Later in the evening I received the aurora alert and ran back into the shack. 6m was filled with VERY strange signals. Yeah - it was my first aurora on 6m. I have never worked Sweden before on 6m, since it's a tough path on summers. Yesterday evening I worked 26 different stations from SM. Plus several OH's, LA's, OZ's. It was a lot of fun. Someone should explain me why the heck aurora distorts signals like that ;)

Looking forward for next aurora..