I had my very first few DX contacts this weekend on my Ten-Tec Jupiter and Eagle One HF Vertical. I have to say, that it was AWESOME. I've had the radio and antenna setup in its current configuration for the past 3 weeks or so, and not really even heard many DX stations. I've worked quite a bit of the ARRL Centennial QSO party, and been having a lot of fun with that. But last night around 9:30pm EDT, I started to hear quite a few DX stations on 20m.
It all started with VV2CSI out of INDIA! I couldn't believe that I could hear someone on the opposite side of the earth from me on my system. I listened to him have a few QSOs, and then I decided to jump in. I threw out my call at his next QRZ, and WALA! He picked me out of the pileup, and gave me a 57 signal report out of India! Not bad, for my first ever DX station.
After that, I tooled around the band for a bit, and watched the cluster reports from DXspots.com. If you haven't checked out dxspots.com, you have to. It's invaluable information on band conditions, and what's being logged where. Anyways, I worked the band for another 30 minutes. In that time frame I worked Serbia, Finland, and Russia. I was also in a pile up for a station in the Azores, but I never seamed to make it through. All in all, what a great weekend of radio, and my first true DX work. I couldn't believe it.
All of my DX contacts this weekend were on 75 watts of SSB power on 20 meters.
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