Well, another interesting and busy month on the radio, and a few running repairs in the garden!
As mentioned last month I am going to say a bit about Islands On The Air (IOTA for short).
This is a long running programme that does what it says on the tin. All the islands of the world have been given a code, such as England, which is EU-005. EU is Europe and 005 is its number. If you live on the Falklands, it is SA-002 (South America), whilst Australia is OC-001 (Oceania).
Other groups are Antarctica, Asia, North America, and Africa - about 1200 islands in all. This month, without really trying, I have contacted 66 islands. My prize contact for the whole month was on 15 Metres SSB with FK8GM on New Caledonia, reference OC-032. This was also an ATNO (All Time New One) for me, that only took 40 years to get!
Anyone can have a go at island hunting, I can recommend it especially as the QSL cards can be spectacular, though they are not all tropical paradises (see picture).
This month saw, amongst others, the CQ World Wide SSB contest which is in essence a free-for-all for DXers.
I started with a couple of contacts that were very loud but took a lot of effort to get a reply.
It did not seem right, so having checked the radio, switches & amp’, I took a trip down the garden only to find the antenna lying in the grass.
A quick check showed no damage to the loop so I rushed about and found some bits to bodge it all back into the air (another photo). Now I know that yellow wire works nearly as well as blue!
As pointed out by Ken, our president, there are many new amateurs on the bands since the last sunspot maximum so the bands can be a bit crowded, especially if a 'rare-ish' station is on.
This makes any unusual contact a bit special. One such is 'RI41POL' which I have worked several times. It is a Russian polar research ship active from as close to the North Pole as it can get. Unfortunately, however, contacts with the South Pole are nil so far.
To make up for that, several contacts with Bob VP8LP have been made in Port Stanley. Another unusual contact was with KN6IPA/AM claiming to be flying over Norway in a military tanker aircraft at 30,000 ft. (I’m sure Murmansk wasn’t in Norway).
Well, that’s it for March with 162 DXCCs for the year, now to see what April brings!
Chris, G4ZCS
