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..

KD4POJ completes my WAS!

2011 has been a great year! Today I went through my last patch of bureau cards and found KD4POJ-s card from North Dakota. This one was a missing piece from my WAS puzzle. What a nice Christmas present ;)

JCC milestone - 20%!

My confirmed JCC count rose to 166, which is 20% of all possible 809 Japan cities.